 Thank you guys for being here, appreciate it, I'm excited to spend the next couple days with you. This is one of the coolest things that we've made the most mistakes on, spent the most amount of money, done the dumbest things ever, and learned a ton along the way. So when you think about expanding, like each and every one of you are here, because you realize that you don't want to do it all forever, right? Like who's here? Because you're like, dude, I don't want to have to do it all forever, okay? Fortunately, we're in a place now where, I'm not going to do this because I'm freaking obsessed with what we do, but we could go to Hawaii for the next 77 days until 8%, which is the amount of days until 8%, by the way, okay? So what, know your numbers, right? 77 days to 8%. We could literally go to Hawaii for 77 days and still make money, right? The business would still survive because of amazing people and amazing partners. Now, again, are we going to do that? No, would Lauren like to probably, okay? However, we are not going to, and so I'm excited to really walk through the things that pivotal moments in our business and the things we've learned along the way that have meant the world to what we're doing now, because I can tell you, most people think businesses build people. Like who's ever thought I can make anyone successful? I can drag anyone to success. I can, Rebecca can take anyone and turn them into a Medicare man or a Medicare Wonder Woman, right, or whatever, but we can't. However, people build businesses. The moment I got out of the way and stopped trying to do everything, because true story, I was sitting at a retreat with a gentleman that had $170 million company. I was telling you guys this last night, and we were whiteboarding out our whole organizational structure. I'm like, dude, I got all these companies and all this stuff, and I don't know what I'm doing, and this was a few years ago. And so we started doing our organizational structure, which we're going to do with you guys at some point. And when we were doing that, we were whiteboarding it all out. He's like, OK, who does this? I'm like, me. Who does this? Me. Who does this? Me. Who does this? Me. Who does this? Me. Who else feels like that, by the way? Who does this? Me. Who does this? Me. And he's like, why? I'm like, because I'm the best at all of it. Who else has been guilty of saying that a time or two? The dude that had a $170 million company looked at me and said, that's your first problem. He said, your ego is getting in the way of you being a success. And you helping a lot of amazing people along the way. And so what I learned is, he said what you really want. And I took this to heart. He said, you want incredible people around you that are better at their job than you ever would be. He said, then your company will grow. Then you'll have great people around you. Then and only then will you start to really do something special in your space. So we took that to heart. Like Dillon behind the camera, doesn't get any better. I would put him up against anybody in our area, potentially anybody in the country. Dude's insane. I mean, who else pumps out as much video content as we do in the insurance industry? I'll wait. Nobody. There's a reason for that, by the way. Some of you guys need to be turning the turn volume up, by the way, right? This isn't all about the expanded business. You've got to also expand some content, some thinking, some brand awareness, some social authority, as Cassidy used that word. I like that. But then you've got to think, OK, we got Cassidy, who literally built the entire workbook. There's everything content related. There's all of our social media, event coordinator. We actually, I'll think of a better word, we drowned her in events, clearly, and work. She finds a way to pull it off. And she's unfreakin' believable, right? Then you've got Andy, who is now the, Lee was asking me what Andy's title was. He's our COO of CA in 8%. And the dude thinks and does stuff before I even think about doing it, by the way. Like who wants people around them that thinks about doing something and does it before you even think about doing it? And it's done, Rebecca, as you're raising your hand, because I know your situation, right? It's done before you even knew it was supposed to get done. Like that's what you want, right? That's what you want, whether you're running an insurance business or a carpet cleaning company, right? You want people, and you need people. So this whole weekend is going to be about people. Now, in a few minutes here, we're going to pass the mic, not an actual mic, however, we're going to pass it. And then you're going to fake pass it. I'm just kidding. And we're going to have each one share what you're looking for. So I'm going to give you a few minutes to go ahead and think about what you're going to say, right? We want to know, this is a great way to kick it off in a few minutes, we want to know as you may want to take some notes on this unless you've got a phenomenal memory, so we'll see, OK? Your name, where you're from, what you specialize in insurance-wise, what you believe you personally are extremely good at, and then number five, some areas that you're here to solve this weekend. Some areas that you're here to solve, right? So again, sometimes I give out steps, and I forget the steps, by the way, so OK. Who else does that? Name, that's just how my brain works, by the way. Name, city, specialize, what I'm good at, what I'm here to learn. Thank you, by the way. Thank you, Christina, appreciate that. So also, I like focusing on the positive with what we can improve, by the way, right? Like, it's one thing to just say, all right, tell me what you suck at and why you're here and all that, and not focus on the fact that each one of you are extremely valuable to your business in a specific way. Like, one of the things that we're going to talk about at some point is organizing a lot of your tasks throughout the day and eventually trying to offload a lot of them, by the way. Like, there's a lot of stuff that for you to grow, for Matt Timmon to get to seven figures, he can't freaking do it all, right? And for 24, he's on his way, by the way, too, which is pretty freaking cool, right? Dave, how crazy is that? It's insane. And when he was talking about the retreat that we did last August, it was like 25 of the, 23 maybe, of the highest level earners in the industry, right? Now, it was missing a few of you to really complete the highest level earners. However, it was unbelievable, way better than we ever dreamed. That's right, there was not enough females in the room because there wasn't any, that's right, that's right. It was Daddy David and a bunch of youngsters, right? And Daddy Brian, my dad, yeah, yeah. That was a blast, though. So, as you're thinking about your answers for these, here's what I want to challenge you with. There's a few things that we start thinking about future casting a little bit, right? Like, for me, the biggest things that I've ever thought about in my life and for me, the biggest things that I really believe every business needs, okay, is some targets along the way. Now, I'll try to write so you can actually read it because normally I can't even read it, okay? One of the things I do every single day, every single day, May 6th, 2021, wrote down my goals, right? Is writing down my goals every single day. We talked about this last night as well, okay? You did it? Okay, good. There we go, okay, boom, I love that. Who else did that today, by the way, okay? So, think about this, thank you, sir, okay? And you've heard me freaking hounding it for 120 days since we met in Miami, that's right. That's Brian from Iowa. There's one thing you can do that will drastically grow your company. It's to write down your goals every single morning. Now, some of you are like, dude, I don't know what to write down, right? Well, that's part of the problem, which is okay, you're here, we're gonna fix that. But if you don't know where you're going, you can't ever fix it, can you? Right, and you can't ever get there, right? It's like trying to shoot a target, like Lauren was with Elena at this 10x operation, bad A event, since I tried not to curse very much. Bad ass event, okay? And they were shooting at targets. And Lauren actually won the competition amongst all the women for like accuracy of shooting. And I've never seen her shoot before. So I was like, where'd that come from? Okay, yeah, exactly, exactly. Thanks, there you go. Thinking about it, I didn't even know I needed a marker, but apparently I need a better one, because this one isn't doing so well, so thank you. And why I was getting that story is, before I forget, is she had targets that she was shooting at. Like if you don't have some targets in your business that you're shooting at or that you're headed for, like you're not gonna get there, right? So here's the things that I write down. And there's gonna be some people that try to give me a run for my money. But here's the things that I write down every single day. I'm the number one speaker in the world, because I will be, right? And it was funny, Ernest was talking to me last night, he's like, dude, you've gotten so much more comfortable public speaking than you, even maybe since the retreat too. He's like, since, he's like, dude, I've been watching you for a while. And he's like, man, you get so much more comfortable, right? I don't get nervous anymore for something like this, but like bigger events, or every step along the way, you better believe I was like pissing my pants and nervous as can be, right? But now I'm like, man, the more I do this, the better you get at this, right? The more you get it writing down your goals, the more you're likely to start to. What do you got? Oh, right, bigger, okay. We'll try. You hate it, Diana. Okay, next, we sell $1 million every 30 days. Okay, that's just our sales teams, right? I mean, if you take the company accumulation, we already do that. However, I want just our sales people to do that between just marketing and CA sales, by the way. And I think, well, marketing already hit over a hundred grand this week in sales, and it was yesterday, in three days. So we'll get there, apps are frequently, quarter of a million dollars a week, right? We'll get there by, we'll probably get there by the end of this year. But I'm writing that down because I'm future casting that, right? I'm thinking ahead about that. I'm also writing down that askings acquisitions, that's what AA stands for, okay? Just in case you're wondering. Owns 1,000 apartment units, right? Like we bought a storage facility right behind our office because the owner was selling it. He had a deal and it fell through. He's like, do you want it? I'm like, yes. He's like, we don't even know how much I'm asking. I'm like, I don't care. And what are you asking? He's like, I have a five and a quarter. I'm like, I'll give you 500 grand. You in? He's like, well, let's take some time and think about this and let's, you know, make sure you want it after he gives me a tour. And I'm like, dude, I look at him and I'm like, hey, you just had an offer, it fell through. You're acting like you're getting all these offers. I am signing on this today and you're not leaving until we do, okay? You're selling me the storage facility, right? Because time kills all deals. Guess what? He gets an offer for $15,000 more, all cash. So should I have waited or should I have not waited, right? No, because it's right behind our building. My assistant can run the company. And when I start looking at projections and numbers, that thing has the potential to do $100,000 a year, right? I mean, that's like, you start running the math. You start learning real estate. This thing is freaking good. And we can brand it as us. It's on the campus. Like it's a power statement. It's like, dude, why not, right? I also write down, I need to start writing CLA babe instead of CA because my wife and I want a beach house, a jet, obviously. Who knew I wanted a plane before you came here today, okay? Who didn't, okay? And a helicopter. I just added that this year. I'm like, you know, I, she wrote in one this past week with the Cardons. I'm like, I want a freaking helicopter too. I'm like, how cool would a retreats be, David? If we're rolling to dinner in a helicopter instead of a charter bus. Boom, there we go, okay? We're already halfway there. We got the pilot. Andy, go buy us a helicopter. Come on, okay? What else am I writing down? No more speaking of the world. Some million dollars every 30 days. Apartment units, owns beach house, et cetera. I'm also writing down that 8% has 10,000 attendees. I'm also writing down that our total company revenues equal $100 million plus. And now I'm starting writing down because it'll help me get to this goal quicker that we have 50 sales people. I am every single morning, all of them. Yep, and that's a lot. And everybody, you get 100 opinions on how to write down goals. They will all be different, by the way. Jillian can attest to that. They will all be different, right? However, I'm writing them number one as if it's happened, right? You don't see like, I will be the number one speaker, like no, no, I am, right? Like you can see the way I'm wording those things. And a lot of people would say, well, you need some that are like smaller so that you feel like you're getting some wins and some confidence. Sure, right? And sometimes you do. We have wins happen in our world every 14 seconds. So I'm like, dude, I'm focusing on like down the road, right? This is future casting. This is vision, okay? So these are the big things that I'm focused on. And I've told my team, and I'll tell you guys the importance of goals. There's never been anything that I've written down that did not come true at some point. Which, because if you, I asked my sales team recently, I'm like, guys, Brian Tracy says write down your goals. Les Brown says write down your goals. Grant Cardone says write down your goals. Tony Robbins says write down your goals. Cody Askins says write down your goals. I'll lump them in there. There's a little brand, brand authority. I'm like, if every single wealthy person in the world, the most successful people on the planet are doing this single activity every day, why isn't everyone doing this single activity every day? So now you go into my sales room and I'll ask this question who wrote down their goals this morning in our 20 person sales meeting in the morning. Literally 90% of the room will raise their hand. And they're all making more money than they've ever made. But I'll ask, it's funny, I'll ask an audience. Like I was at Nate Swad event and I said, hey, who wants to, who wants to be successful? Who believes you have another gear? Who believes that you can learn something from successful people? Who believes if the success people said you should do something that you would do it? Who believes that if I said there's one thing that helped me get to where I'm at because I'm doing it, who would do it? And then I ask, who's ever heard of writing down your goals every day? And I raise my hands and I said, okay, who wrote them down this morning? Like two people, right? So please, for you, if you get anything out of this weekend and you can get a lot more, this is the number one thing I want you to get. Because when you get it and when you actually adopt it, and it takes me 90 seconds. It takes me like 90 seconds a day to write these things down. Now, this weekend is all about you starting to think about what does this look like? What does your company look like? How many staff do you have? How much revenue do you do, right? I mean, truthfully, here's what I want. I want, and it'll get bigger along the way, by the way. I want a four-story building, Glass Tower in Springfield, Missouri. Maybe bigger, by the way, okay? So you got SIG, right? For retail purposes, for Medicare clients, right? You got SecurAgent Marketing. You got CA. You got, part of this is like a little workout facility and part of this is a big event space so that we can do stuff like this in the top of the Glass Tower, overlooking Springfield, okay? Why not? And then we've got a rooftop balcony for parties so we can start having our socials on the top of our own building. That'd be a little cooler, wouldn't it, right? And, helicopter pad. Why not? Why not, okay? Why not? I'm telling you guys, everything I've ever wanted has came true because of this exercise. I mean, because we'll do, between those, just those three companies, we've got a few others that are smaller, we'll do over 13 million bucks this year. Is this gonna happen? Apps are freaking Lutely. You couldn't convince me it's not going to, okay? And I will prove anyone wrong that doesn't think so. 8% has 10,000 attendees. Do I believe if others can throw a conference with 10,000 that I can too? Apps are freaking Lutely. I'm learning stuff every single year to possibly pull that off later, right? Like, does it kill me that like, to have 350 last year during COVID? Apps are freaking Lutely, right? Like, I hated that, but I was also the only one to do it too. Because I looked at the team and we're like, dude, nobody's doing events right now. Everybody's like, Tatiana's thinking, we're not even gonna do it. She's like, I'm in New Jersey and Malia's telling her, I'm going to the event. And she's like, Cody's not doing that. They're not, it's COVID, it's 2020. He's not doing an event. She just told me this two days ago. She's like, he's not doing an event. And what did Malia tell you? That you weren't doing an event. Yes. And she was a ticket. I was like, are you gonna buy the ticket without you confirming she says, I know that she's gonna do it. She's the only person who doesn't think that she's gonna do it. And did we do it? Right? And did we do it? And the next thing I know, I look at her and she's going to the airport. And I'm like, fuck me. She's like, I should have went, I should have believed in her, okay? So, do I believe though, like right now we have 830-ish tickets sold for 8%. Like, we have it on my whiteboard. We track it every single day. Like, I know the number at all times, by the way. Kelly will be updating on my whiteboard today, by the way, in my office. So if you were given, if you ever walked through my office, you saw the actual 8% real numbers and I don't care if you see them. Most people do events. They don't want you to know how many people are coming. I don't care because I'm already like proclaiming what I want to eventually happen. So, like, they're already telling us like 980-80 is the absolute max you can get in this room in Dallas, the Statler. We'll find a way to fit 12 more chairs. Because if you can get to 1,000, you might as well get to 1,000, right? I don't care if I gotta go give out tickets to 12 homeless people and change their life. I don't care, right? When you get that close, you better get to 1,000, right? Why not do retreats at a beach house, right? One of the things that would be really incredible that will happen at some point is we would love to also own a home on the beach in like the Bahamas and fly there whenever we want. Why not, right? Why not? 1,000 apartment units because I'm getting obsessed with, I'm starting to get obsessed with real estate a little bit. It's fun. I've ignored it for far too long. That's the biggest mistake. There's been a mistake I've made. It's not buying real estate sooner, right? So, you may see our brand like shift to where we're still insurance focused, but we start including a lot more real estate in the future as well as we're starting to grow. And there's only so many subscribers you can get in the insurance industry we're like 36,000 now and growing. Like I was telling Ernest last night and Tatiana told me like when you do an interview with us on our YouTube channel you get 40 messages within hours, the same night. Like she's recruited, she's recruited like 20 people. That's crazy, but it's fun. We can do this. I really believe like right now I believe the best pure motivational speaker on the planet is probably Eric Thomas. Unreal. He's speaking at 8% Nation 2021 in July in Dallas. Okay, so I don't care what you got to cancel. I don't care what you got to do. I don't care if I got to pick you up. I'm telling you, you do not want to miss 8% this year. If you think any other event we've ever done has been good, you will leave this one. At the end of it on July 25th you will walk out on Sunday saying holy freak I didn't think they could make it any better. And it's gonna get better every year. Why? Because you should get better every time you do something, right? Every time I get up to speak, I will literally, we record a lot of this stuff because I go back, whether we put it up or not I go back and personally watch it. Why? Because for us to expand all this stuff and for this stuff to come true I've got to get better at this. So I don't know if I've done it. One of the things I always, I have the worst habit in the world of when I speak, what is it? Touching my belt, fidgeting in general. Yes, I don't think I've been better so far today. Why? Because I've been watching myself and I'm like dude you gotta stop that crap. Like you cannot be the number one speaker in the world if you touch your belt every 12 seconds, okay? Right? So you gotta know that stuff about you too to start expanding, right? Like you've got to be, really what you've got to do is you've got to be in the know to a certain extent. Andy are there things that happen literally every single day that you do not tell me about? Thank you. Most people think dude I want to know. I don't. Right? I don't. Like we got some employee that leaves and becomes a psycho. I don't care. I don't want to know either. Here's what I've also learned, okay? And some of you can already relate to this. There's going to be people that come in your life that join your team, that you believe are there for the long term. That you believe are going to change the face of your company forever. That you believe you want to do anything you can to keep them and they're going to leave. I guess you guys didn't expect me to say that. They're going to leave. And it's going to be the best thing for your company. Anybody that doesn't want to make this ride is an idiot. That's what I believe. I believe everyone in the city of Springfield should be working for Cody Askins or one of our companies at some point in the future. Why not? Right? And I'm telling you there's been key moments like for example, Landon, we had a specific person on the marketing staff 18 months ago that left. And Landon's like, dude, what are we going to do? Like, dude, it's fine. He's like, I don't know, this is a big, this one's important, dude. I'm like, dude, it's fine, trust me, it's okay to be okay. Literally two weeks later, he's like, I think that was the best thing that ever happened to us. So that is going to happen to you, right? You've got to just be focused on the future, right? And the vision, and the people piece will take care of itself. Andy's going to talk a lot about hiring, onboarding, how to make sure that you find the right people, by the way. Because the most important, and Lauren's going to talk about it in a few minutes, the most important thing in a company, again, is people. Because what you're building with people and culture and processes and all this stuff can be easily affected and destroyed with just one bad app. And once you know that that is the case, please fire them. Don't even wait, because it ain't worth it. Please, like I've had to do in the past before Andy was with us, I would box their stuff up and literally walk them to the door and make sure they didn't break anything on the way out. Why? Because they were not good for our, now other people may have hired them because they just don't understand business. But I'm telling you, you people are the most important part of what you do. And so these next two days, you're going to hear us talk about people a lot. And the reason why is the people aspect, right? David Camper to take over P&C in the country, right? From an independent standpoint, they need a lot of amazing people. Now they already have a lot of amazing people. They need a lot more. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're gonna love. It's right there, click on it, see you in there. Who heard when we first started today that the best people in the world have a coach? Was that Bill Gates earlier that said everybody should have a coach? That's ridiculous, that's amazing, that's crazy. Ridiculous in a good way.