How To Sell Annuities (Full Masterclass With Tom Hegna)

All right, ladies and gentlemen, in today's video, I have a special treat for you guys. I've brought the leading annuity expert in the industry to show you guys the best way to sell annuities in 2025. Now, not only are we going to talk about the number one strategies and the best ways to frame the conversation and ultimately sell annuities, but also how to do it ethically. So you're putting your clients in a good position. So I'd like to welcome to the channel Mr. Tom Hegna, one of the leading retirement experts in the country and the foremost expert here on annuities. Tom, welcome to the channel. It's good to have you here.

Thank you, Tim. It's great to be with you.

Fantastic. Well, for the agents that are watching at home, can you kind of just give like a brief background? I know a lot of people do know who you are, but maybe for those who aren't familiar with your stuff, if you kind of just give like a brief overview of who you are, your background, and, you know, kind of what you.

So look, I'm originally from a small town in Minnesota. I went to college at North Dakota State University on an Army ROTC scholarship. I was commissioned in the military, spent six years active duty, 16 and a half years Army Reserve, retired as lieutenant colonel. I was in the insurance industry for almost 35 years. I was an agent with MetLife. I was a national marketing manager with them as well for Variable Life. And then I was at New York Life. I started out as an annuity wholesaler. My region always led the company every single year. I got promoted to be a national manager. Then I went into home office. I worked my way up to be one of the top 50 officers in the company. I retired from New York Life in 2011. I went out on my own. I've written now six books. I had a PBS TV special, Don't Worry, Retire Happy, that played in 70 or 80 million homes in the US and Canada. I've spoken at every main platform for MDRT, Top of the Table, NIFA, Finseca Gamma, all of those. And what I try to do is show advisors how to help their clients retire the optimal way. Retirement's been studied in depth by PhDs all over the world. There is an optimal formula that's based in math and science, not based on my opinion, not based on anybody else's opinion. And that's what I write about, that's what I speak about.

Got it? Got it. So it sounds like a big portion of your kind of the stuff. You're putting out there is positioning yourself and branding yourself as an expert, which you obviously are, which kind of attracts people to you from what I'm understanding. Is that correct?

Well, you know, I'd say New York life was about 10 years ahead of the industry focusing on income when everybody else was still focused on accumulation. New York Life focused on income. And so I had to take a field force of 12,000 agents that were happy selling variable annuities that were sexy, that, you know, even had a guarantee that you wouldn't lose money over a 10 year period of time. You could have 100% of your money in the market. It's crazy great stuff. But I had to get them to shift from that over to thinking about income. Spias and dias, you know, single premium media annuities and deferred income annuities, very boring products until you get to really know them. And when you start learning about the mortality credits and you start realizing that these are foundational products that, that you really cannot retire optimally without some form of income annuity in your portfolio. And, and it has everything to do with the mortality credits. This extra money that you get paid from the risk pool that you don't get from stocks or bonds or real estate or bitcoin.

Got it. Got it. So big, the big piece of like where annuities fit in is all about the income, right? The mortality credits, for those of you guys watching at home is essentially, you know, life insurance is in case you die, annuities are in case you live too long. Right? You outlive your, your other money in retirement. So for people that are watching this, that maybe they want to get into selling annuities or maybe they've sold a few, but obviously they're not doing it at the level that you're doing. Your top advisors or agents are. What would be the first piece of advice of how to find the clients and ultimately how to set up the conversation and go into all of that?

Well, I mean, every baby boomer is a potential client because all the baby boomers are either in or near retirement. And that's the people who typically would purchase annuities. And it's, it's really not about selling a product. It's about solving a problem. You know, people coming into retirement, it's scary. Now everything's on them. Their parents had pensions and a pension, by the way, is a lifetime income annuity. It's a guaranteed paycheck for life. Social Security, by the way, is a lifetime income annuity. It's a Guaranteed paycheck for life. And last time I checked, people love their Social Security, they love their pension. And I will tell you, they love their income annuities as well. I've never, I've been in this business 35 years. I've never seen somebody ever complain about their income. And no, no, please stop sending me those checks. I just don't need them. I don't, I don't want any more money. I've never seen that happen. So. And the number one buyer of income annuities are people who've already bought them. Like, I own 13 annuities, okay? I don't sell annuities. I don't sell a single annuity, I don't sell life insurance, I don't sell long term care insurance, But I own 13 annuities, all right? Because I have seen the power. See, an annuity does three things in a retirement portfolio. Number one, it will improve portfolio performance. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. Number two, the research shows you're likely to be happier in retirement if you've got guaranteed lifetime income. And number three, now the research shows you're likely to live longer. You know, Patrick Tricker wrote an article for the Journal for Financial Service Professionals where he said the average 65 year old male who purchases a lifetime income annuity can expect to live 20% longer than a 65 year old male who does not. And the whole rest of the article explained why people of guaranteed income tend to live longer. So if something improves the portfolio performance, allows you to be happier and allows you to live longer, how could anybody, anybody be against that? I don't understand it. And especially since most annuities are not fee products. You know, the big knock on annuities is they say, well, the fees are too high. Well, most annuities don't even have fees. You know, the only, there's only two types of annuities that have fees. Variable annuities have fees and some optional riders. Otherwise the annuities out there don't have fees. Like a single premium media annuity is not a fee product. A deferred income annuity is not a fee product. A fixed annuity, a myga, a multi year guaranteed annuity, not a fee product, a base fixed indexed annuity, not a fee product, a rila. Most rilas are not fee products. So the question really comes down to how do you explain to your client that an insurance company can make money when they're not charging any fees? How do you do that? I'll tell you How I do it, I explain to them what a spread product is. For example, if you go down the bank and you buy a cd, a certificate deposit, does the bank charge you a fee? No. Are they working for free? No. They pay you 4%. They lend it out to your neighbor kid, 9% interest on their car loan, they keep the spread. It's a spread product. So if an annuity guarantees you 5% a year for the next six years, if that insurance company doesn't make more than that, they're not going to make any money, they're going to lose money. Well, then you say, well, why would I let the insurance company manage my money? Well, because they can do a better job of it than you can. They got 100 year time horizon. You don't. They can buy a building that's not even profitable for 40 years. You can't do that. They get institutional rates and all the fees. You don't get that. And so these annuities are set up to help people succeed in retirement. And I don't know how, how the annuities ever got a bad rap. I guess there were bad annuities, you know, 15 years ago. I don't see many bad ones now. So, you know, it's just, you got to, you got to know your stuff if you want to, if you want to go and represent this stuff, you got to know it inside and out. And that's where I see a lot of people get into the business. They don't know the products, they don't know what they're talking about, and then they say things that are not true and that's where they get in trouble.

Got it. So, like the biggest thing is people are, they're under the impression that there's all these fees built in. But it's basically, it's, it's similar. It's a bond alternative. Is, is the best way that I've heard people sell it.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, Dr. Roger Ibbotson wrote a whole white paper where he compared fixed index annuities against bonds. And he said fixed indexed annuities have outperformed bonds for the last 40 years and are likely to do so for the next 40 years. Okay. So and Barclays, they're an investment bank, they found the same thing. The Wall Street Journal had the headline, why the case? Removing some bonds to annuities. I mean, it's. Yeah, you don't, you. Stocks and bonds are more correlated than what you think because back in the financial crisis, if you remember, everything went down, stocks went down, bonds went down, Oil went down, gas went down, gold went down, Bitcoin went down. You want things that don't go down in times of severe stress and the annuities didn't go down and the life.

Insurance didn't go down 100%. 100%. And, you know, obviously those are like. You can tell that you've done your research and you've been educated on this topic for a long time. For the people that are maybe newer, how can they go about getting that level of conviction and understanding all of the different points? Is it just a matter of studying and reading things online? Or what do you think is the best, best way for. Let me tell you this, how to find these products.

When I got. When I got hired by New York Life to be a wholesaler for New York Life, I asked them to send me every brochure, every product guide, every prospectus, every statement of additional information. They sent me this huge box. I went through that box with a yellow highlighter. If there was something I didn't understand, I highlighted. What does this mean? What does that mean? Why is this here? Why is. Why is this different than page 24? What does this mean? What does that. They could not believe it. They could not believe somebody went through that entire box with a yellow highlighter and asked like a thousand different questions. But if I'm going to represent something, I need to know everything about it. I need to know how does the reset work? Work? How does that work? How does a cap rate work? How does this work? How does that work? Because I want to explain it accurately. Because if you explain this stuff accurately to people, they love it. All right? Where people get in trouble is they start saying things they don't know. They answer questions they don't know with answers that are wrong. That's when people get in trouble. So I would say if you're an agent, you better know everything about that product that you can. And there's wholesalers out there that will meet with you. They'll buy you breakfast, they'll buy you lunch, they'll sit there, they'll instruct you, they will teach you. But you got to know that. And once you know that, and once you know that, you know, that's when confidence shows up. You know, and you know, and you know that you know, then you get confidence.

So for. For people that are watching, like a wholesaler, can you give, like, a little more clarity on what exactly that would be? I'm personally not a wholesaler.

Is your link between you and the company. So, like, let's say you were going to write for American national or North American or F and G. Every one of those companies has wholesalers that are experts in their product, and they will sit down with you and expl. Lane, you know, if you write variable Jackson national, they've got it. You know, I mean, all these companies have wholesalers that it's their job to help you write more business. And so they will educate you on the. The ups and downs of their product. And you need to ask them, what are the good things and what are the bad things? Like, where is that product better than yours, and where's yours better than that product? You want to know where you stand competitively as well? I. I think that's what I want to know when I'm going on an appointment.

So wholesaler is basically like another term for almost like a carrier rep. Would that be correct?

Yeah, I mean, a carrier rep, we call them wholesalers. I mean, they're kind of known as wholesalers. Yeah. Their job is to. Is to be the link between that company and you. And they get paid for you to write more business, so they want you to write more business.

Got it. Makes sense. Makes sense. I'm familiar with that then. So for. For someone watching, though, like, how do you tell the difference between paralysis by analysis, where it's like, I need to know every single thing, because, you know, there's some agents who, they get so deep into that of like, I need to know every single thing about the product. They read every single paper, and they take months or sometimes even years, or they never even start. How do they find the balance when it's like, okay, I'm ready to go.

Then take one of the wholesalers on appointment with you, and they'll help close the business for you. You got to learn how to close business, too. And you got to, because you're not helping anybody. If all you're doing is reading stuff and you're not putting it into action, that does. That helps nobody. It doesn't help you, doesn't help the client, doesn't help the prospect, doesn't help anybody. All right. When I said know your stuff, I mean know the products that you're writing. You don't need to have every answer for everything. Do a fact finder, which is asking a lot of questions. Bring the fact finder back to your manager or to the wholesaler, and they'll say, okay, here's what you need to do. You show them this, you say this, they're going to say this. You say this back, you know, I mean I have a whole online training coaching system. I can get people smart pretty fast. You know, it takes 10000 hours to become a master at anything. I've, I've done this for over 10000 hours. But I can speed that up for people if, if they want. You know, and I've got products, I've got, you know, like I talk about these third party references like, you know, I tell agents all the time you have a conflict of interest with your clients because if they buy, you get paid. If they don't buy, you don't get paid. They know it, you know it, I know it, we all know it. So what you want to do and so you're never going to be taken as serious as somebody who's not getting paid. I don't get paid whether they buy or not, the Wall street journal doesn't. Dr. Roger Ibbotson, Dr. Wade Pfau, Dr. Michael Fingate. And so you want to use disinterested third party representatives that don't get paid. And there's all these positive articles out there. There's, there, you know, I've got them right here on my phone. There's one that just came out for the alliance for lifetime income with Dr. David Blanchett, Dr. Michael Finkett and Guaranteed Income A License to Spend. And it talks about how savers in retirement have trouble spending money and that by giving them these paychecks and playchecks they're more likely to spend their money. You know, you've got, you've got BlackRock, who doesn't even sell any annuities. And they say that if you put a guaranteed income in your portfolio, your performance goes up and your risk goes down. You know, Dr. Michael Fink and Dr. Wade Pfau. Purchasing an income annuity with a portion of retirement savings could provide a higher potential for success, greater legacy wealth over long term and increased risk capacity. They even say income annuities are less expensive and safer for risk averse retirees whose primary goal is income security and retirement. There's so many positive articles out there that you want to build a playbook. In fact, @tomhagnet.com I have a playbook in my shop where you can get all these third party references and put that and carry that with you. I always tell you to tell agents that if somebody says they don't like annuities or they don't believe in them or they're too expensive, you can't change their mind. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still, what you need to do is put research in front of them so they can change their own mind. That's how I do it. I look, I do seminars in front of hundreds and thousands of people and I know of that audience that 20, 30% of these people hate annuities. I still talk about them and I prove to them that, that you need one in your portfolio. That if you don't have an annuity in your portfolio, I will promise you one thing, you will have a suboptimal retirement. It'll be less than what it otherwise could or should be if you had some guaranteed income in your portfolio. And that's what all the research shows.

So it's all about. You know, you essentially want to put third party unbiased resources in front of them for them to consume that show positive things about annuities. And that can kind of, that can flip the people that, you know. For example, like my, my grandpa, his dad had like a variable annuity in the past and got eaten up by fees and didn't have a positive experience. So he has this entirely negative outlook on the whole product. But if you consume enough unbiased, Wall Street Journal is obviously not biased against annuities. They can essentially kind of convince themselves of the alternative. Basically, yeah.

I mean, and a variable annuity is not an income annuity in most cases. So he bought it for accumulation, market probably went down and then he probably got mad and got out or whatever. But if you would have kept it in there, he would have had a very good ride. I mean, I can promise you, if you go back and do an analysis of that variable annuity, and if you said, okay, when did he buy it? When did he sell it? If he wouldn't have sold it, what would be worth today? It'd be worth a whole lot more today than when he sold it. Because, you know, and so some people, they make bad decisions on timing. They, the market goes on, they sell and then they blame the annuity or the fees are too high and the market. Well, you'd lost money in a mutual fund too, if you'd have done that, or you'd have lost money and managed money. And so, you know, I'm not, I'm not justifying the variable annuity. What I'm saying is if he would have held it for the period of time that he could have held it, he would have probably done very, very well.

Got it. Makes sense. You mentioned a concept. I think you said playchecks and paychecks. Can you explain that? Concept. I knew you have a book.

Well, that's the title of my first book, Paychecks and Playchecks. And so what? Paychecks and Playchecks. What I love about this book is it concludes with four simple steps. And if everybody just followed these four simple steps, they would retire just fine. It's step number one, you need to cover your basic living expenses in retirement with guaranteed lifetime income. That's the paycheck. So step one is you figure out how much money these people need every month to live their own retirement. Social Security counts because it's a lifetime income annuity. Pension counts because it's a lifetime income annuity. But whatever, they're short. That's where the annuity fits as a minimum. That's what the research shows as a minimum. You need that guaranteed income for your paycheck. But then what do you want your retirement income do? That's the playcheck, that's the travel, that's all the fun stuff. And that's where stocks and real estate and crypto and whatever else you want to put in there, that's where that fits. So step one, cover your basic living expenses, guaranteed lifetime income. Step two, then optimize the rest of your portfolio to protect yourself against inflation. Step three, you must have a plan for long term care. No retirement plan is complete without a plan for long term care. And number four, the most efficient way to pass wealth to children, grandchildren and charities is with life insurance. Don't leave your kids any money. You're supposed to spend all of your money, leave them life insurance. You can do that for pennies on the dollar. So people just followed these four simple steps, they would be able to retire in an optimal manner.

Got it. And your book, I'm assuming that's available on Amazon, correct?

Yeah, all my books are available on Amazon.

And that would be for an agent that wants to learn how to sell this and set people up in the right way. Reading that book and then implementing those same practices would be a great way to do that, I'm assuming.

Absolutely. And I mean, this book has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of annuities. I've helped agents sell billions in annuities. And that book has helped. I mean, if you just read the Testimonials on my LinkedIn site or whatever, you're just gonna. I mean, it's just this stuff works because it's based in math and science. It's not somebody's opinion. I don't have an agenda. I'm not trying to sell annuities. I'm not trying to sell life insurance. I'm showing what the research shows. How much life insurance you should have, how much annuity you should have, how much investment you should have. And by the way, Ernst and Young just did a whole white paper. You can Google it, find it yourself. And you know, they don't sell any life insurance annuities. They're an accounting firm, but they, they have some pretty smart people and they use AI and, and they came up with what they called the perfect retirement portfolio, which is 30% income annuity, 30% cash value life insurance, 40% investment. And if you looked at my own personal retirement plan, it would be very close to those numbers.

Got it, got it. So understanding this stuff, understanding the, the logic based arguments in terms of what makes annuities better than not having them in your portfolio, you know, really just being, being a student of the game as much as you can. In the past you had to go through a box of papers with, you know, a yellow highlighter and get all that stuff. Now you can consult back and forth with ChatGPT to filter this information and give it directly to you. It's much easier than, you know what it was in the past. But like, there's a balance between learning that information and not getting paralysis by analysis. And the best way to do that is bringing somebody in that has that knowledge to consult with you on your first few deals.

And I found a new, a new website that I use a lot now. It's Copy Owl AI. Copy Owl AI. And like, if you want recent articles that are positive on annuities or you tell me about rmd, I mean, it will create a little eight page summary for you. It'll reference all the articles. It's pretty good.

You said Copy Owl AI.

Copy Owl AI.

Got it. I'll, I'll leave a link to that in the description. So going and doing all the research, you know, let's say, let's say somebody at home, they're like, cool, I got a game plan together, I'm going to go buy Tom's course, I'm going to buy his book, whatever I need to do, study up on this stuff. How do they go about finding these opportunities? Because I know you said every baby boomer is an opportunity, but how do they start that conversation, approach it where it doesn't come across as like they're trying to sell somebody something?

Well, I mean, there's several ways to do it. You know, I'm, I'm a big believer in seminars and webinars. I think People like to learn now way it can be very non threatening, especially webinars. They're, they're, they're in their own house. You say leave your checkbook at home. Watch this guy, he doesn't sell any annuities. He'll teach you how to do it. You know, and I've got recorded webinars that, that advisors can use. They can do their own webinars, they can have their wholesalers do webinars or seminars. That's one way I would be on all of the social media. I would be on LinkedIn, I'd be on Facebook, I'd be in groups, I'd be posting instead of trying to sell them stuff, post positive articles. And if you don't know what to post, my whole social media strategy is to post things that you should share with your clients. So you could just follow me and share everything I do, that'd be fine with me. But provide value. So instead of saying, hey, let me come over and set an appointment with you. No, you got to provide value to earn the chance for them to come over. So what we try to do is provide at least three or four pieces of value before we ever ask for anything and then three or four pieces of value and then we ask for something. And that's been a model that's worked pretty good for us. And so use social media, it can help you set appointments. You know, you can help you with referrals because you can look up who are their neighbors, you know, you know, John Smith over here, do you know the dentist on the corner or whatever. And so you can use these, these techniques to get in front of more people. But I'm a big believer in seminars and webinars. I think, you know, you can make one presentation to 100 people. It's a lot more efficient than doing 100 presentations to you know, 100 people.

What do you think makes like the webinar or the seminar? Like why does that work so well?

Well, because you get to, you get to deliver a great amount of information without being interrupted. Think about that when you're on an appointment and you start in your presentation. Yeah, but you know, my brother in law, he had a bad experience and you go down that rabbit hole and then you start, do your presentations again. Well, I just don't think this is going to be right for, and now you're, now you're having interruptions and with the webinar or seminar, boom, I get to deliver the whole thing. Good, bad, I can handle objections. I can put it all in there. Fees. I can put it all in there. And wow, they go, whoa, I didn't know that. I'm so glad I learned this. Like, I am teaching them. And you should be focused on teaching your clients, educating them, not trying to sell them. Educate them, because if they can understand this stuff, they're going to buy it. I don't sell anything, but I create a lot of buyers. That's what I do. I create a lot of buyers. I don't sell, I just create buyers. Because when. When you see the math and science behind this, it makes perfect sense. I get nobody that says, oh, that sucks. Oh, I can't even believe anybody ever buy annuity. That never happens in my seven. Ever, ever, ever. So this stuff works. And again, I got it all based in math and science. I can show all the research behind it. And I think when you can show the research of leading PhDs in the world and you have the confidence to deliver it, they're gonna. They're gonna buy because it would be crazy not to.

So it sounds like. So you got to get your airtight, logical argument. You got to understand it from a fundamental perspective from there. Instead of like, you know, rule of 100, calling a hundred people on your phone and being like, hey, I got this annuity. You need to buy it. You're just starting to position yourself as an expert by sharing valuable information, maybe posting content, maybe it's your own content, maybe it's other people's. And then you start delivering a message. You know, it could be a webinar, it could be a seminar, it could even be a video that you film, like a training that goes over it. People start to watch that, and then they're coming to you. So you're using leverage of online social media, all of that, as opposed to, like just walking up to random people in Walmart and trying to help them with their retirement.

Yeah, I mean, look, I was brand new, too. And I know it's tough when you're brand new in this business. And I did mail and mail and phone call, mail and phone call. But now I would be. I would be all over social media, and I would still call people and I would still reach out to people, but I want. I want to be in such. And there's other groups. You know, every local area has an AARP group and they need speakers. And there's the Lions Club and the, you know, the JCS and whatever all these. These other groups are. They typically have a speaker. And why not go talk to them and just talk about Retirement, don't try to sell an annuity, just tell them about retirement, that you need some guaranteed income, you need to manage the long term care risk, you need to manage risk against inflation. What happens if you live to be 130? What happens if this happens? What you know, and, and just start educating people and they'll start coming to you. You know, instead of trying to sell people, focus on helping them find out what their problems are. If you ask the right questions, almost every single person will tell you exactly what they need and exactly what they want. You just got to ask more questions. Stop talking. Telling is not selling. Telling is not selling. Listening, asking, that's how you sell.

How do you know what questions to ask? Is it like you have like a fact finder that you go through and.

You know, I would do a fact finder, but you know, there's a, I've got a couple books that have great questions. Like my book Retirement Income Master Secrets of the Pros. That's where I went out and, and found 12 different retirement experts. And each chapter is about them, what questions they ask. That's a great place. Marv Feldman wrote a book called the man on a Mission. Now the Feldman family has written more life insurance than any other family in the history of the world. Okay, because that's Ben Feldman's family and Marv Feldman and Wendy Feldman and all the Feldman's are in there. And he wrote this book on how to sell life insurance. And it's got just hundreds of questions. And I would, I would get that book. That book's available@tomagnet.com too, but it's available on Amazon as well. But you know, get better at asking questions. Ask three times as many questions, you're going to make three times as much money. Stop talking, start listening.

I love it. I love it. So, you know, reading the different books to understand the questions. Fact finder, you said Marv Feldman, Ben Feldman, those, those books as well.

So let's say, you know, somebody goes out there, they implement all of what we said, they start getting those appointments. You know, we've just, what we've covered is like, it sounds like a lot of, a lot to do a lot of work. What's the actual, like what is possible with somebody that's selling or not selling, but solving problems with annuities? Right? What is possible in terms of maybe the income somebody can make? Like, because a lot of people watching our channel, maybe they, they've recently been brought into the life insurance industry and they're looking for like a Better vehicle than just, you know, phone sales of selling mortgage protection or final expense or something. And they're looking at getting into the more advanced markets. Like can you paint the picture of what's actually possible if they make that transition?

You know, I think one of the top annuity producers I work with.

Just sold his practice for $100 million. And I know a lot of advisors that make over a million dollars a year. And certainly I wouldn't even do it if you didn't make six figures. I mean, I certainly wouldn't be in this business making 40,000 a year. I'd rather change tires and discount tire I think. But if you want to make a quarter of a million, a half a million, a million, this is the business that you can do that in. Okay. It's not even that hard. There's all those baby boomers out there with trillions of dollars of assets that need help and nobody's telling them how to do it. I mean you got these investment people who they call themselves fiduciaries that come fake fiduciaries because they don't use life insurance, they don't use annuities, they don't use long term care insurance. It took me a long time to figure out there's two types of fiduciaries. There's an investment fiduciary and a retirement fiduciary. Well, these investment fiduciaries, you don't want to have them if you're, if you're going into retirement. They're fake. They're not going to take away any of the risks in retirement. They just want you to invest in stock market. So you make their fees and fees and they say come commissions are bad, pay me fees forever. Fees are better than a one time commission paid by an insurance company. That's ridiculous. Okay. And so what we need to do is we need to focus on retirement with these baby boomers. And that means handling risk. And you've got to use insurance products, you've got to use long term care, some form of it, or life insurance or annuities. That's what the research shows. I've yet to find one single research book that says, oh, just use the stock market for retirement. I haven't ever seen it and I don't think I ever will because it would be, it would be, it'd be a wrong book. It would not be based in math and science. It would be based on somebody's opinion, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean you mentioned someone selling their practice for 100 mil. I know, right now we're in peak. Peak 65, as they call it, from 2024 to 2027, 11, 400 baby boomers turn 65 every day.

I'll be one of them. Yep, that's.

There you go. Congrats. Congrats. So, you know, I did a. I did a presentation. I actually did a webinar like, a week ago, and I said that it's. It's an ocean full of money right now, the industry. And all you have to do is stick a tiny little straw in it and take one sip, and you're good for life. And your family's good for life, too. There's just. There's such an abundance out there right now. And so I think it's really powerful to paint the picture for people because, you know, it can be easy, but in the beginning, it is a grind. You know, you have to learn a lot of things. You have to, you know, bring in a lot of people. And, you know, it's not a grind like digging trenches or drilling for oil. Right? Like, we're both sitting in a cushy office talking about how you can make seven figures just talking to people. But there is work involved, and I think sometimes people get so caught up in the work and they're not willing to look long term with what's actually possible. So I think it's always important to paint the vision for people.

And two things. Number one, I was taught, if you give this business two years of your life, it will take care of you for the rest of your life. But that means nights, weekends, holidays, you know, you don't get. You don't get time off. You got to bust your butt for two years straight. And it worked for me. But the other thing is, people are looking at this as a job instead of a business. This is your business. You got to think like a business owner. Business owners have to invest money. You have to do some advertising. You have to invest in your own training. I mean, you know, Ben Franklin said the. The best investment you will ever make is an investment in yourself. So invest in yourself. Learn this stuff. You know, guys like me, there's other guys out there, too, but we can get you pretty smart pretty fast. All right? If you. If you. If you want to learn it fast, come to us. Okay? We can do that, and we don't cost that much money. But you got to invest time. It's more time than money, actually, because my stuff isn't expensive. But you got to spend some time there. I told you 10,000 hours to become a master. I've spent 10,000 hours. I'll bet I can get you there in a thousand hours or less. But you got to spend. Not going to get there, you know, watching three videos on a Saturday. You're not going to get there.

Yeah. Like you said, you can give it. You can give it two years of nights, weekends, and holidays, or you can give it 10 years of 40 hours a week.

But the 10 years will be pretty miserable instead of two miserable years. And then all the rest is going to be fun.

Yeah, 100%.

And the longer you're in, the easier it gets to get more referrals. You know, the people that said no before, now they learned that that guy was a chach. And then he's coming over, back over to you, and, you know, then they got their kids and one of them hit the lottery, and this guy just got a business bought out. He got, you know, $50 million, needs your help. So, you know, just give it time, be patient.

You start, you position yourself more and more as an expert, and that stuff compounds. Right. Like, I'm sure when you first started, you know, offering annuities, you didn't have people lining up to have you help them. But now you probably, like, you probably couldn't even take all the possible appointments you could get on your calendar right now.

Yeah, well, I. But that I'm. I'm in a different phase now. So now I'm playing golf four to five days a week. I'm. I'm actually walking the walk. I'm not just talking to talk. I mean, I. I'm 70, retired now, and I, I'm traveling the world with my wife, and we're. And I'm a member of two golf clubs, and I play golf four to five days a week. Pickleball, two days. I'm. I'm living the life that I've written about because I've done everything that I write and speak about. I put it all into practice.

Yeah. And it's 100% possible. People just commit to the industry.

Yes. And by the way, I didn't get here by myself. I wouldn't be here without Joe Jordan, without Jack and Gary Kinder. They're the ones that I invested my money and time with, and they took me to another level that I couldn't have got here by myself. I got audio tapes from mdrt, and I was listening to them when I'm driving from appointment to appointment, and I picked up a lot of great stuff from a lot of smart people. And that's how you got to do it. You're not going to do it on your own. If you think you're going to do it on your own, it's going to take you 40 years on your own. You're going to make a lot of mistakes. You can get there a lot faster if you learn from others.

100%. 100%. So any final words or final piece of advice for people watching at home in terms of how to increase their annuity production and ultimately, you know, because everyone has the dream of getting to the point where what you're describing, your lifestyle is now, what would be like your final piece of advice for people that want.

That want a couple of things that you say with to people? Number one, you're not getting any younger. Number two, you don't get to take any of it with you. And if you think about that, you are not getting any younger. You don't get to take any of it with you. You're supposed to spend it. And when you think your healthiest years are going to be now or in 20 years, when you think the most fun time you could have is going to be now or in 20 years, you know, you need to get this income now. You need some more playchecks so you can actually enjoy your retirement. I want you to enjoy your retirement. You're. What are you trying to be, the richest guy in the cemetery? Let's go out. Let's have some fun. You know, retirement is all about spending money. That's what it's about. It's about dinners out. It's about bottles of wine with friends. It's picking up the bar tab with your golfing buddies. It's traveling the world. It's about spending money. Well, savers like me have a tough time spending money. I've saved 30, 40% of my income my entire career. I don't like to spend money, but now I have to. Well, I've got 13 annuities. I got a bunch of paychecks and play checks, and I'll spend those because they never run out. I don't have to dip in my savings. I don't have to go to Schwab. I don't have to go to my ira. I can just get my paychecks and playchecks. I'll spend those. I'm happy.

Fantastic. Tom, if people want to learn more about learning from you, obviously you talked about your website, you talked about your books. Sounds like you have, you know, kind of like a course and maybe a mentorship or something as well. Where can people Go to learn more about that.

I mean, tomhagnet.com if you want to get, like, all my books, all my audiobooks, we got a special deal going on right now.

It's where you get all those books, audiobooks, the DVDs. One month free of my online training. Coaching for 150 bucks. It's like a $9,000 value if you used it with a hundred prospects. All right. And even if you just bought it, it would cost over 500 bucks for 150 bucks. Let me see if I can find. I'll try to read it. It's tomhagna.com. let me just get the website for you. Just a second.

Well, Tom, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. I'm going to include the link to Tom's, all of his information down below in the description if you guys want to check them out. Highly recommend you do. I mean, ultimately, we're talking about a skill set that can pay you. I mean, I know multiple people making seven, multi seven, sometimes even eight figures in this business, helping people with the retirement stuff. So, I mean, for what you're going to invest, it's probably one of the highest ROI skill sets you could possibly learn. So definitely recommend checking that out. Link down below in the description. And, Tom, any final words to the agents watching at home?

No, I just want to thank you, and I just think it's so important for people to, you know, focus on helping. Focus on listening instead of telling. Listen more, talk less. And, you know, you don't want to be the richest guy in the cemetery. That's powerful. You're not getting any younger. You don't get to take any of it with you. Just use some of these words. It's really a words and language business, and you will. You'll benefit from using some of those words.

Fantastic. Well, I appreciate it. Take care, guys, and we'll see you in the next one, all right?