 I had to build my own belief in this. Like, I knew you could probably sell some insurance over the phone, but to write a million dollars a month virtually, I never thought a million years was possible because I'm from the old school way of doing seminars, you know, the dinner seminars and then coming to see me in my office. And that was the way that I've done it for the last five years. And we had to change, man. We had to innovate with the times. Is the sales process different from face to face to virtual? Great question. The answer is absolutely no. But what this has allowed me to do virtually is to talk to people in seven different states in one day. So it allowed me to take my little, you know, my little area of Virginia, North Carolina, where I was, you know, writing, you know, eight, nine, ten million dollars a year in annuities and be able to scale it all the way across the country. Well, like this year, I'm, you know, I've lived here in Raleigh, North Carolina. This year I've done over three million dollars in the state of Texas. And I haven't left my office. You see, I'm sending me so I could never do that. And in the same day I'm selling an annuity in Texas, I'm also selling annuities in Utah, New Mexico, you know, Virginia, Massachusetts, you name it. I've sold in over 17 states this year and I haven't left my office. So it's cool to me to be able to take that and scale that. You've clearly figured it out. And what do you think has been the biggest thing that you've figured out that most other people haven't yet? One thing, and I'm going to kind of share, I'm going to really, this is I don't share as with many people, so a lot of people are going to get this. We built, yes, I'm giving this to you guys. Only here, only here. This is five years in the making of trying to figure out how to be different. Here's what we're going to do. A check out box is going to pop up on your screen on YouTube. You're going to swipe your card and then Ryan's going to continue. That's right, only $10,000 for the next five minutes. So I get a lot of questions, man. How do I sell annuities virtually over the phone? I want to sell millions in annuities and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars, like my buddy, Mr. Ryan Palamini. What's up, man? How you doing, man? Great to see you. You too, buddy. We get this question a lot, man. Like, how do I own a niche and sell annuities virtually like with the world we're living in and you're doing it crazy successfully? You know, it's been a combination of learning this whole process for the last five years. And so we were fortunate, man. I mean, obviously I was trying this virtual thing last year, not realizing there's a pandemic coming, right? And so we were fortunate. And in August of last year, I started trying some stuff over the phone, trying to some work leads over the phone in different states to actually just kind of prove to ourselves that it could work. And believe it or not, it did. And so, you know, now that the pandemic had hit, we've been really lucky because we had a head start in the game. And so what I love about this, though, and we're going to talk a lot about this is it allows you to scale your business across the country, no matter where you are. And we'll talk a lot about that. But yeah, man, it's been a great year doing this thing virtually. And just a lot of people probably have heard my story before, but I used to have four different offices, three in Virginia, one here in North Carolina. I was traveling like a madman at those offices, you know, Monday through Friday at one of my other offices. And, you know, doing really well, writing $8, $9 million a year in annuities. But man, I was exhausted. And so this year, I'll tell you, Cody, right now I'm pacing $1 million a month, and I have not left my office since March of this year. We shut our offices down in Virginia, and I'm doing everything 100% virtual. And we've almost doubled our annuity volume by not leaving this office, becoming more effective and efficient than ever before. That's crazy because you think about it naturally, like it's like, okay, I can never do that. I've got to go to people's homes, and I got to show them brochures, and I got to go multiple appointments, got to go back, drive four hours again next week, like, you know what I mean, all this stuff. But that's, apparently that's not true, man. I mean, what, you've clearly figured it out. And what do you think has been the biggest thing that you've figured out that most other people haven't yet? It's really our process. I'm not going to say it's flawless, but it's pretty darn close. I mean, we have built a machine in my office, and I'm going to tell you this right now. You know, I come from the mortgage protection and final expense world, a lot of people know. And you know, I was always chasing the next lead, like a lot of people do. And for me, I'm very systematic. So I had to really kind of take a step back five years ago and really figure out what does that want to accomplish. And so obviously, for the last five years, I've been learning this annuity world, becoming a student of the game. But in that process, building a sales process that allows me to have these kind of results, no matter where I am in the country, no matter if it's virtual, in person, it doesn't matter. The process works. I think that's what's really important is, and I'll talk about that, our sales process and some of the things that we've done to get to where we are. But you know, that's so important is the way that we think about this, being able to pivot and to become innovative through these times has really led us to where we are right now. That's awesome. Yeah, because a lot of people, man, they're like, you know what? I'm just going to close my office. I'm just going to sit back. I'm going to get rid of all my employees and I'm not going to do nothing until this thing is over. I'm going to hunker down. And you're growing and skelling and doing more production than you were doing face to face. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a dead truth. And here's why, Cody. When I had all my offices, I was, like I said, I was going to each one. So I'll give you an example. Roanoke, Virginia. I had an office in Roanoke, Virginia. So I'd go to Roanoke for two or three days, meet with clients, do my first appointment with them, drive back home, do all my reports, go back and sell a bunch of annuities and IULs and big whole life and big life cases. But that was very time consuming because I'm on the road. I'm away from home. And I could only see clients in Roanoke, Virginia that day. Then the next day I'd have to go to Richmond, Virginia, where my other office was and so on and on and on. But what this has allowed me to do virtually is to talk to people in seven different states in one day. So it allowed me to take my little area of Virginia, North Carolina, where I was writing $8, $9, $10 million year in annuities and be able to scale it all the way across the country. Where like this year, I live here in Raleigh, North Carolina, this year I've done over $3 million in the state of Texas and I haven't left my office. You see I'm sending me so I could never do that. And in the same day I'm selling an annuity in Texas, I'm also selling annuities in Utah, New Mexico, Virginia, Massachusetts, you name it. I've sold in over 17 states this year and I haven't left my office. So it's cool to me to be able to take that and scale that. Now he's bragging, man. He's a freak. He's a super freak. And dude, did you ever think he'd be selling annuities in freaking Utah, man? You're in North Carolina. You're in Duke country. Never, man. And that's the thing about this that's exciting is I had to build my own belief in this. Like I knew you could probably sell some insurance over the phone. But to write a million dollars a month virtually, I never thought a million years was possible because I'm from the old school way of doing seminars, the dinner seminars, and coming to see me in my office. And that was the way that I've done it for the last five years. And we had to change, man. We had to innovate with the times. I love it. I love it, dude, man. What do you think? Before we actually start to break down, and you start to actually do some training and really help and provide some additional value, which you always do a great job of, what do you think is possible? Like where's this thing going? Because it feels like to me, not only are you creative, you're always sitting outside the box. You're always freaking pushing the envelope. Like how do I do more? You know what I mean? Where do you see this thing going? Because I don't see Ryan Palomini always being comfortable with a million bucks a month over the phone. No, no. And so I've always ran my business in phases. And I think that's one of the most important things for any entrepreneur to focus on. Because I know everybody wants to go from zero to a million dollars overnight, but it doesn't work that way. And so for us, Cody, the next phase of my business, and I know this is kind of next level stuff, but the next phase for my business is we're building out our wealth management book. And so yes, I'm doing a million dollars a month in annuities. It's great income, great revenue. It allows me to scale and grow my business. But my next goal is to get to a billion dollars in assets under management within the next seven years. So that's the next thing for us. And so yeah, no, I'm not satisfied with a million dollars. But I'm getting into the wealth management side of this world. Again, five years ago, I was slinging final expense. Never in a million years thought about wealth management. Never thought about getting that level. But when you're writing this annuity volume, you're leaving a lot of money on the table too because suitability, you can't get it all. If I have a client that's got half a million dollars, I can only get 300,000 of it. What about the other 200,000 that I can't put into an annuity because of suitability? It allows us to go back and pick up a lot of money that we've left on the table over all these years. And we've done a phenomenal job of keeping our CRM full. But I don't even have to prospect anymore. I've got my book of business that I can go back to with all my clients who have annuity dollars that've got millions and millions outstanding. So those are the kind of things, Cody, and I can't get to a billion alone. I have to get there with my team. So we're building out platforms now that allow people to get into the wealth management side of things, manage money for a fee, and really kind of build it. So I would say my goal is to get 10 of my guys to $100 million book of business, which will bring us to a billion. And obviously, we'll be at over probably 200 million in annuity volume at that point as an agency. Jeez. I need a loan, Ryan. RP, I need a loan. We're doing that too, by the way. We're breaking out something where we're doing venture capital for loans for CPAs and loans for advisors to help them come off their business. So we'll talk about that at a different time. Dude, that's unbelievable. You're thinking big, man. You're like, you know what? Why think millions when we could think billions? Well, that's the thing, right? I mean, look, I'm 33. I'm going to be in this industry for the next 30 years. I mean, so that's the thing, too, is if you plan on being in this, you really need to run your business in phases, because if I had to stay in mortgage protection to final expense, look, I was making six figures doing that, but I got burnt out. I was ready for something more, right? And so then I got into the annuity world, pretty much mastered this world. Not that I'm bored, but it's, you know, what's the next challenge, right? So you have to be challenging yourself. And so the next phase to me of my business is to get to that level. Now, I don't think everybody wants to do wealth management. It's not for everybody. But if you're really trying to strive to get to build your business to the next phase, then you have to figure out what's next, and that's what's next for me. Yeah, dude, you're 33. I mean, I don't know, man, you're old, you know, you're old now. I am, I'm old in this industry, right? I'm getting old now, man. It was cute when I was making six figures at 25. Now you're 33, it's around, God. Yeah, for real, that's what's funny, is the average age of interest agent is 59. That's crazy. I just hit 30. We're both low 30s. But yeah, you're right, man. We're gonna be around for another 30, 20, 30, 40 years getting after it, doing the thing. I love it, man. I love to see your growth. Thanks, man. What's the sales? How did you learn, is the sales process different from face to face to virtual? Great question. The answer is absolutely no. So here's what I would say, Cody. Prospecting is important. And I'm gonna tell you right now, and I'm gonna be very honest with everybody, I've always said this, you know, I've been in a niche market for a long time. I work in the federal space predominantly. And I'm gonna kind of give you guys a story. So this is, I like to ask this question, and I'm gonna say this is, you know, this morning I did a three hour long training for a $300 million FMO. And they wanted to talk about this process. And so I don't really deep into it. But one of the questions that I asked the people that were on that call is, and this is something that I ask myself every single day. And I think it's very important in this industry. And the question is, is what makes you different? Right, it's a simple question. But I don't think people think about it enough because I have this saying in my office, I look at it every single day. And it reminds me what I need to do daily. And that is to stay in my lane and to create space between me and the next person. So I look at every day, I say, stay in your lane and create space. I think that is so important because we are in such a flooded industry, right? We have so many people. There's over 300,000 financial advisors. So what makes you different from the person next to you? Right, and, you know, here I am in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dude, you could throw a rocket hit, 40 advisors in the head. Right, so why does somebody skip past the other five offices to come to mind on the way down the hallway? And that's something that we, as a group and as an agency, strive for, excellence-wise every single day, is how do we become better? How do we continuously keep creating space in our industry? And so five years ago, when I started thinking about that, I thought about, yes, listen, I can do seminars, which I do. I can do social security seminars, but it's no different than what all the other advisors are doing. So I really wanted to focus. I think everybody needs to focus on figuring out a niche, finding a niche market that you can get into and really start to create space in. And Koei, that's what I did five years ago in the federal market. I work with federal employees all over the country. But again, predominantly, the reason I moved here from Raleigh to Raleigh was because I built a really good brand in the federal space between North Carolina and Virginia. So I was able to do a lot of business with the federal employees, but that took me five years to build up. And so, you know, from a prospecting perspective in creating space, my sales process is all about being different than anybody else that they're ever going to talk to. And that was what I talked about with that $300 million group today was you have to find ways to be different, right? And so it comes down to your sales process. And I'm going to tell you right now, my sales process from the time that I went from face to face to doing this virtually has not changed. It didn't change it at all. The only thing I changed is probably making fun of myself and how I can't use technology for crap and getting people to laugh at me, right? Because I'm a millennial that can't get this mic to work half the time. So, you know, but it's cool because you get to make fun of yourself and you have to be comfortable enough to do that, right? So you see my setting. So I'll give you an example. Is this where you do an appointment right here? This is it. This is my war room right here, man. This is why clients see this. So I think one of the things too is invest in your business, right? You have to invest in something that's professional, especially if you're going to do millions of dollars of annuities and financial planning over the phone. You know, you have to be presentable. It's you have to create a space where your clients feel like you're sitting with you, right? Because right now you're looking at me and you're sitting across. It feels like you're at the end of my conference table. We're having a conversation, right? And so when I'm doing my virtual appointments, this is exactly where I do it from right here in this chair. They can see my office. My staff walks past here all the times. They see other people going back and forth through the window. It's a professional setting that people can, you know, can feel comfortable with. They know that I'm not sitting in my basement, you know, my mom's basement. And, you know, I see all these people doing virtual stuff with their computer, you know, up their nose. You know, they got their camera pointing straight up their nose, they got their nose hair. It's just weird. Like, like be professional. You know what I'm saying? So I'll answer your question though. My sales process hasn't changed a lot. It's just more of being a little bit more thorough, right? Because if I've got somebody sitting here next to me, you know, we can touch feel and it's just different. It's a different vibe. So you have to do a better job of being more transparent, being open, and really letting people warm up to you with this virtual thing, right? Because if I'm working with somebody in Texas and I live here in North Carolina, it's just different when we're not face-to-face, but it doesn't mean you can't do the same things and, you know, have the same feelings with that client. Yes. If that makes sense. And so you end up with Zoom appointments, I'm guessing. Say it again. You end up with Zoom appointments. This is how you actually conduct yourself. Yeah, yeah. So my first appointment is over the phone. And my first appointment is really going through a fact-finding process, right? Because I need to know if there's an opportunity to do business or not. If there's not, you know, that we put together a nice report for somebody, you know, email it to them and we call it a day. But if there's a great opportunity for me to write some big IUL cases, you know, some big annuity cases, then I take it to the second appointment, which is this right here, virtual. And then my second appointment is when I really go through my recommendations but before I get into that, I do want to talk about, you know, kind of how that first appointment goes because, you know, as we talk about being different, one thing and I'm going to kind of share, I'm going to really, this is, I don't share as with many people. So a lot of people are going to get this. We built. Yes. I'm giving this to you guys. All right, here, bro. Only here. Only here. This is five years in the making of trying to figure out how to be different. Here's what we're going to do. A checkout box is going to pop up on your screen on YouTube. You're going to swipe your card and then Ryan is going to continue. That's right. Only $10,000 for the next five minutes. So one of the things that's important is having a process, right? And so obviously I'm at the point here in my office where number one, I don't book my own appointments anymore. I have staff that does that. So I figured out what I'm very good at and what I suck at. And I'm okay with understanding and knowing that I suck at a lot of things, but I am pretty good at closing business and connecting with clients. But paperwork, organization, making phone calls, I suck at all of it. So I try not to do anything because I will mess it up. I promise you that. So the process is we get a lead in and we create our own leads internally. And you know, but you can buy leads. We bought annuity leads before, whether you're doing Social Security, did a lot of Social Security seminars done virtually now. However you're generating leads, you know, it's fine. You're about to test out some of ours. Yeah. How much tests? I'm so fired up to test yours. I mean, and I will be the honest, transparent test dummy for you guys. And so what's kind of cool is if we do that, I can tell you what works and what doesn't. You can always just make them better. So that's what I'm fired up about being the test dummy on there. Because look, it's, it'll lead as a lead, man. I mean, a lead is just somebody to talk to. As long as I've got a bunch of people to talk to, I know what the law of numbers that I'm going to land something. Even if I suck at what I do, it's impossible to have enough people to talk to and not accidentally make a sale. That's how I got into the annuity world. 10 years ago as I accidentally made some annuity sales and figured out that there was this thing called an annuity. You know, but, but the process of this, my, my staff, they get the leads. I have somebody that books my appointments. And I think it's also good too, when you're in the financial planning world to have a third party booking for you because it makes you look more professional. Yes. First opinion. Right. So. Yeah, really good point because I was, I was going to ask you two, I was going to, I was one of the things I was going to ask you was, yeah, how you, if you made the calls and how you got to your appointments. So I'm glad you mentioned that because I was like, you know what? I guarantee your Ryan doesn't book his own appointments. Right. Well, the thing is, could we look at, you have to build a successful infrastructure at your office. And I'm going to tell you right now, I could never, never do the volume that I do without a great infrastructure. Don't be wrong. Look, we had to hire a lot of people. We had to fire a lot of people to find the good ones. It's just, it's like building an agency, right? But now I've got a phenomenal trained, family trained staff. They know the whole process. Everybody in my office is licensed. So we know the same lingo. And the thing about it is, is we've built a culture here to where everybody wins as a team. So when I write annuities, I incentivize my team. They make money when I sell annuities. So when we get different plateaus, right, every, for every million that I sell, they get a big bonus. So you have to include everybody in the process because then people are going to want to be a part of the process, right? And the more that we do, the more that they make. And so it's a winning solution for everybody. But that's the culture that we built in our office, is we win as a team, we lose as a team, right? So if I've got a great team surrounded around me, which I do, it allows me to be more effective and efficient at the things that I'm great at. And it allows me to not worry about the things I suck at, you know what I'm saying? So that's the difference. So the other question that I asked this big group today was what's the difference between a CEO and a salesman? And I think people need to really think about that question. Because there's a major difference between the CEO of a company and a salesman. Don't get me wrong, the CEO has to be a great salesman. But what is the major difference? And it really comes down to the mindset, right? Because a salesperson is stuck on getting past this one leader, why this one lead didn't work or this, you know? And they're constantly chasing the next lead where the CEO is painting the vision of the company and constantly talking about it with their organization. They get them moving to the next level. As that's one small example. But my point is, is you talk about how I think bigger. And I follow you and your slogan is think big. The love of God who thinks bigger than Cody Askins. I wish I could be better like you. But you think about that. That's the difference between a CEO and somebody who's stuck on a freaking lead that they can't sell. It's a very big difference, right? When you know where you're going and you can run your business in phases, that is inspiring to a lot of people that you're working with. Because as a CEO, it allows you to show progress to your organization. And people want to be a part of something that's moving and want to be a part of something that's special. But if you're just selling, you know, a life insurance moving on to the next, on to the next, on to the next, on to the next, where are you going? What's the next level? What's your team going to be looking at you going, what do we do next? Like I look at Cody Askins is, I know you're already 10 years ahead of where you're going to be like, you know where you are now, but you know how big your organization is going to be in 10 years. And you are constantly painting that picture to your team. That's the difference between a CEO and you just saying, guys, we're going to sell a bunch of leads today. We're going to sell a bunch of leads today. We're fine. There's a difference between that, you know what I'm saying? And so I think that more people need to start thinking like a CEO and really taking the reins on their business and understanding that if you're an advisor or an independent agent, you are not just a salesman. You are the CEO of your company. Now you can build a company or you could just be a sales person. I know a lot of sales people that make 100 grand and have a great living, but where do you want to go? Do you want to be a billion dollar business? In order for me to build a billion dollar business, I can't do it by myself. I need really great people surrounding me that are smarter than me to help me get there. That's so true, man. I love that you're bringing that up too. I actually got, I just got invited to speak at a virtual event for a company next Saturday, and they want me to talk about mindset of a CEO versus being a salesman. That's so funny you're saying that right now because it's so, so true. And the average agent does think so much smaller like a salesperson. You know what I mean? And you're right. So I love that. And you're going to go for it. On that same note, on that same note, when you think like a CEO, you spend your money differently, you invest your money differently. And I think that this, if I could have two hours to talk about how to invest your money, I wish I could because I'm going to tell you right now this is one of the biggest mistakes agents and advisors make is blowing their damn money. I'm sorry to use the word, but they're blowing their money on stupid crap because a CEO like for me, look, I went into this year with over half a million dollars of cash just in the bank to do whatever I wanted to because in case something happened or for growth, right? That's just in one of our accounts. But my point is this, is as a CEO of your company, I have a choice. I can either have a lot of available cash to grow my business, which I'll talk about in a second, how we spent 200 grand on building our own internal marketing company as a job of a dime. I can either do that or I could pretend like I'm a baller driving around a BMW, driving, you know, having the boat with a nice house, all this stupid crap that's not going to make you money. And I see these guys that are making 100 grand a year as a salesman, driving around this $80,000 BMW. And you know that you're never going to get to the next level by doing that. I'm just being honest with you. You know, it drives me crazy because I coach people all the time to think differently about how you treat your business. That's a CEO mentality. I need to make sure I have a crazy amount of cash available to scale my business at any moment to bring it to the next level because if I'm spending my money on stupid crap, I don't have 200 grand to buy. I bought a marketing company in February this year and I put $250,000 in it. We scaled it from 75,000 pieces of data to a million in six months. That allowed us to take our business and to grow it to we're approaching, you know, four, five, six million dollars a month in volume right now just in the last six months because of that purchase. But my point is, as a CEO, you have to make smart decisions on how you're going to guide your business. And you need to be smart with your money. You know, driving around a BMW does not make you money. It makes you look good for the time being. It makes you feel good. But that $80,000 that you blew that you can barely afford needs to be going back into reinvesting in your business. Totally agree. Yeah. The people that once you make $100,000 and you do something like that and you blow it, you are acting like you've arrived and maybe for you, you have, right? But for us, it's nowhere near. And I hope and really true CEOs, true big thinkers, true dreamers, true people that want to do something big in the world, they hope they never arrive. Right. I don't want to arrive. If I arrived, I'm bored. Is that I'm bored of my mind. So, all right. So, I know I went off on a rant on there, but that was the big thing. And because I think this is really important though, Cody, you know, is we talk about next level stuff like I'm not going to sit here and tell you how to sell the insurance. You can do that better than I can any day long, any day. But what I think that one of the things that makes us different, we talk about creating space is when I'm working with an advisor or if I bring somebody into our agency, number one, you have to set the bar high. So I don't work with anybody unless they do over $2 million a year annuity volume. If you come to me and you're brand new, I can't teach you how to, I don't have the time to teach you how to sell annuity. My training system online can do that. But by scaling our business, I'm going to just tell you this, by scaling our business and doing what we did this year, we have recruited over $40 million worth of producers in the last six months into our top rank advisors. Now, I'm not saying I don't recruit. There's just people that have just kind of come in. I'm not, I just, I really not in recruiting mode right now. But I'm just letting you know when you think differently and you set the bar high and you've got a system that everybody wants to follow, big producers like that are going to fall into your lap. They're going to, I mean, I'm talking about guys that do 15, 20 million that have come to us to work our federal platform. So again, if you talk about scalability, how attractive are you to the market? What is your value to the market? Or you want to talk about thinking like a CEO, how can you be more valuable to the market? And why would somebody that's a $10 million producer come and work with you and your agency? These are the questions that when I go back to Cody and they say, what makes us different? Why me? That's what people need to be asking themselves. So if you're building an agency, you need to ask yourself that question. Why would a $10 million producer join your, if you're trying to recruit phenomenal, why would a $10 million producer join your organization? You need to seriously think about that. Oh, because we got great training for everybody's got great training. Yes. They all say they got great training. Why would somebody come to you? What makes you different? Right. And this is like, this is again what I was talking about with that, that big group today and they're going to scale from 300 million to 500 million over the next year and a half. And so that was the question is what makes you different from the big juggernauts out there? Because there's a lot of big FMOs. You know some of them, the advisors, Excel, the gradients, all these big, big organizations. But what makes you different? Or are you just another one? So again, I want to really kind of hone in on this, Cody, just thinking like a CEO and really how to build a business because this is where we add so much value to a lot of people that we work with from an organizational standpoint. Just thinking differently. But we'll kind of dive into my process. Okay, so I want to go through my sales process. I think it is important. And I'll tell you this, the people who do really well in this business, the annuity and kind of advanced markets, there's really three things that separate you from a lot of other people. Number one is your activity level. So next week, I know like, I think it's hilarious that most people take December off, right? You think about all the, all the agents that are in cruise control until January 1st. And I did a training last week for a real estate company. And the training in the talk was on, it was on momentum and how to keep momentum going into 2021. And our ment, and our philosophy and our mentality here at the office was 2021 began last month. Right? So so many people think that January 1st, 2021 has begun, none enough. If you're thinking that way, you've already lost your momentum. We already started 2021 last month that we're not stopping. Right? So I'll give you an example. Next week, I have over 22 financial planning appointments, first appointments on the books. So like, second week of December, I am insanely busy, insanely busy. And it's going to be like that all the way up to the end of the year. And then we start next year. So you think about filling your pipeline. My goal is to stay incredibly busy and have more activity than everybody else because I know that my pipeline is full. I'm going to accidentally write $2 million in January because of what I did in December. But if I take December off, like 90% of these, the industry does, you're going to spend an entire quarter trying to gain momentum. And it's so hard because then you start 2021 in a position of defense versus offense. Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. I love it. Completely love it. So number one, activity level. So number one's activity, that is incredibly important. But I'll also tell you this, what I have seen, and I've had the honor of spending a lot of time with $10 million plus producers. And what I have seen is the second thing that makes them very successful is their sales. They have a process, right? The commonality is they actually have a process, something that they have mastered and they have become a student of the game. So kind of part two is a two-part series where they have a system, but they also have mastered their craft. So you watch as you go man, I don't think I could ever do a million dollars a month in annuities. I didn't think that either five years ago, but what all I have done for five years, Cody, is become a student of the industry. Every day I study this industry. Every day. You know, I didn't know anything about taxes five years ago. Now I run a national tax practice. I run a, the tax practice, we have tax clients all over the place. And by doing these things, and I became a master at social security. So I teach social security seminars all the time, right? But there's a reason that I wanted to do that because when you build a retirement plan for somebody, it's not just about shoving a product down somebody's throat. It's building a holistic plan that encompasses every part of somebody's retirement. And the fact that I have the knowledge of deep tax knowledge, social security, the, how the, you know, the market works, and all the moving parts allows me to have a different conversation than somebody coming in trying to shove an annuity down somebody's throat selling a, you know, a bonus. It's like, okay, how does that fit into their strategy? Right? So number two is become a student of the game. Become a student. If you want to master this industry, you have to be learning every day. And I look at people coding. I go, you've been in the industry for 10 years and you don't know how to say, you don't know how an annuity works. How many, I mean, think about how many insurance agents you know, that have been doing this for 10 plus years and they don't know how an annuity works. A lot. I'm sorry, but you're not taking your job seriously. That's just my opinion. It's good. It's kind of harsh what it is, what it is, right? Because it's an insurance product that you have the ability to offer. So when we talk about putting your clients in a better position than when you first met them, it has to be, how do you take care of them in all facets of this business? And so that was something that I had to kick myself going, man, I wasted five years of my career not understanding how does IUL, how does IUL thing work? How do these annuities work? How to be able to simply explain it? And so the third part of this is the third thing that big producers do very well is they have the ability to take the complexity out of what a lot of people feel is a complex situation. And the complex situation is understanding financial market. The average person, the average client, or American, is really not that financially literate, which sucks. I'm hoping that things get better. But the reality is very few people in this world truly understand finances. And so part of the reason that people don't take time to learn it is because it's very intimidating to them. People don't even understand how their 401K works. All they know is they contribute to it because they were told to do that. They have no idea what they're in. They have no idea how to maximize it or really what to do with it. And so the beauty of it is, is number three is top producers are phenomenal at simplifying the process. Right. One of the things why, why do I sell so much? Because I have the ability to take the complexity and bring it down to kindergarten level and explain it to people to where it makes sense that they understand it. They're comfortable with it and they see the value in it. That's good. Make the complex simple, man. That's huge. That's what, and that's what great teachers do in any way, in anything, a teacher, an educator is someone who can, like that's what I feel like I do for the industry, right? And what you do for your clients is you are making that complex simple and it's breaking it down. And because people, they don't end up buying if it's super complex, super overwhelming, super over their head and they don't know, it just seems like it makes the decision, it makes the sell, the actual buying decision, supposedly bigger than it really has to be. Yeah, exactly. But the thing about this, Cody, so we talked about, this is how I've been different from a lot of people. I build a retirement plan based on a strategy, not based on a particular product. And what I mean by that is when I do financial planning with a client, I have, now I'm just, I'm really giving it away here, I have a three phase or you call it three part financial planning system that I cover with every single client that I talk to, whether they're 25 years old, or 65 years old, it doesn't matter. I have a three part system that I build a retirement plan and by the time I'm done building a retirement plan for somebody, it is almost impossible for them to not want to do business with us. And so I'll kind of give you the three phases and I'll dive a little bit deep into them. The first phase is what I call foundational planning. And so when I'm talking to clients, I'm talking about building a foundation and so I'll give you an example of somebody that's getting ready to retire, right? Because a lot of people that I talk to, they're right about that retirement age between 55 and 65. And so phase one, if they're younger, phase one is really about growth. Okay, so we'll kind of put that in there. But if they're getting ready to retire, the first phase is building a foundation of income. So you want to learn how to sell annuities. All you have to do is find out what the deficit in monthly income is. Now, a lot of people don't have a pension. So an annuity allows you to create a personal pension for somebody. This is also having understanding of annuities. I'm going to give everybody how an annuity works and very simply. They're built for three things very well. I don't care what anybody tells you. If you're selling them to keep up with the market, you're going to get slaughtered. An annuity is built for three things. It's built to preserve your money. So your clients are going to have no downside risk. They're never going to lose any money. It's built to give your client an income that they cannot outlive. So I would tell you that 90% of my annuity sales are income-based annuities to cover an income that somebody has a deficit in retirement. Because here's the deal. If you have $200,000, how are you going to not outlive your money? It's a question you can easily ask and I'll talk about some of the questions. But they're built to provide you an income that you can't outlive. And third, they're built to pass assets to your family on whatever's left in that pot of money or give yourself an income that they can't outlive. So my, yeah. Preserve provide and pass. There it is. The three P's. That's what it is, right? So you talk about how to take the complexity of an annuity. All I have to do is explain that. And annuities do three things really well. They preserve your money, they give you an income, and they pass assets. And you can't lose any money. So again, this is the simplicity that we try to bring to our clients. But building a phase one, and this is why this is really important is when I'm running a report for somebody or if I'm doing financial planning, what I want to know is what are your income sources in retirement, right? Meaning, do you have a pension? Are you just going to be living on Social Security? What, you know, and if you are, let's say that you have somebody that's not part of the federal system or states and they don't have a pension, we know that most people who retire are going to live on their Social Security. It's going to be their biggest source of income, right? But if they have $4,000 or $3,000 a month expenses, and their Social Security is $2,000 a month, the question is very simple. Cody, what are you going to do to fill that $1,000 a month gap that you have an income? Yeah, exactly. Right? This is where you get to use your assets to fill that gap. And this is why annuities work so well, because I can take somebody who has a $200,000 401k and show them how to create a pension for themselves that they can never outlive. So I'm going to give you guys a couple of really good questions that I ask. And this is really, this is how you kind of dive deep into a lot of this stuff. So, again, building something around a strategy. And again, I'm going to kind of contest this. I could take me four hours to go through this, but. It's good. This is awesome, buddy. Because I got freaking, look at all the notes. But so here's a couple questions that I always ask people when I'm doing my initial fact-finding interview with somebody is a couple of things. Cody, let me ask you, in a third role playing, I would be like, Cody, let me ask you this. What is your strategy for never running out of money? And I just stop. And most of the time, you just hear crickets, right? Because people don't have a strategy. And I think that is really important that you talk to your clients about strategy. Because if I just say, Cody, I got this really great product, 10% bonus. We're going to put you in there, save your money. They're going to be like, okay, and like, it sounds great, but what is that going to do for me? Right? That's the difference. That's product selling versus conceptual. Versus conceptual selling. I love selling a concept and the strategy because I need to teach them and show my client how that annuity fits into the strategy. Not just sell them a product, but how the product actually fits holistically into their strategy. Love it. A great question is, what is your strategy for not running out of money? The other thing is, if you're talking about their 401K, so let's say they've got a 401K, that's the perfect time to ask them. You know, Cody, what is your strategy for distribution of your retirement plan? You've got $400,000 in your fidelity account. What is your strategy for distribution of that $400,000? Most people are going to say, I haven't thought about that yet or I don't know. And then it's a great follow-up question. Okay, perfect. So you have $400,000. If you're taking deductions from it and you're taking income from it, what's your strategy to not run out of it? Right? Because if you're in the market and you have their $400,000 in your fidelity account and it's all in the stock market and you retire and we go through 2008, can you afford to lose 40% of your retirement plan at age 70? You absolutely cannot. What are you going to do to hedge against that in retirement years? You see, it's really nothing more than asking really great questions. You want to get good answers, ask good questions. That's really what it comes down to. But I ask questions for a purpose to get people thinking and in the way that I need them to be thinking because they've never been, they never thought about stuff like this before, right? So again, those are a couple, those are a few things that I'm building kind of phase one. And I'm asking these questions because I need to know if there's a deficit, a gap in income, and how my annuity is going to fill that gap because here's what I know and you guys should be taking, if you're going to take notes, this is going to be something I teach this at every one of my retirement seminars. I'm giving away a ton here. So there you are, man. I almost feel bad. Like they need that. It's all good. So if they wanted to get more, where would they go? All right. So I built, so because I cannot teach everybody how to sell annuity, I wish I could work with everybody but I can't. I built an academy called Level Up Advisors Academy. So if you go to ryanpolyminid.com, you can go on. I have a special 8% nation discount going on. Normally I charge $2,500 for that. I have it down to 400, 400 bucks. It's 15 hours of content. And everything that I know I had to sell over $5 million in annuity. So that, you go to ryanpolyminid.com and you click on the academy button. And you can go there and you can get unlimited. I mean, it's an unbelievable amount of content. Everything that I know. And on those of you guys watching this within the next month, January 15th, I am hosting. I'm doing this once a quarter. That's it. And I have time to do it regularly. Once a quarter, January 15th, I am teaching in annuity master class virtually. It's a four hour long class that I go, you talk about this, I'm giving you like a little bit. I go deep into my entire process for four hours on everything that I do, this whole system. So if anybody that actually registers for that now Cody between now and the 15th, it's $749. So again, that should be charging $5,000 by $749. And that includes the advisors academy and over three months of recorded coaching sessions. So that's my pitch. That's amazing. Yeah. So I'm just giving away a lot. Listen, I want the industry to be better. You know, I could charge $5,000. The training I did today, I charged a lot of money to do that. But I want everybody to learn like, I love the free content you give it away. I just wish I had more time to do it. So I love it. But this is my giving back. Yeah, dude, it shows, man. I mean, you're, you're, I want to do an interview, you know, and you're like, dude, let me train. Let me give a bunch of stuff away. I'm like, even better. You know, I mean, it's just, and plus, plus we, you know, we've got some other videos. If you guys just now watching this, just now seeing Ryan for the first time here, we've got several videos together on YouTube. And there'll be more that is not the end of you and I working together. Because I love the synergy. You and I've had phenomenal synergy since the minute we met in 2018. I've just been phenomenal what you've been doing. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. But I want to get back to this process because again, I think that this is really important for a lot of people listening that are trying to really understand. So again, asking great questions, but let me do this for everybody watching. I want to explain and I want to teach an annuity because I think this is something where everybody's going, phenomenal. You got a process, but how the hell do I sell an annuity? How do I explain it? So one thing when I was starting in this business and I was selling mortgage protection final expense, one thing I could never understand was how a lifetime income annuity, how a lifetime income rider worked. It never made any sense to me. And I think a lot of people get caught up on that because they don't know how to explain an annuity. That's why they don't talk about them with their clients. But the reality is for every 10 people you sit with, you have one to two really, really good annuity opportunities. The question is, are you missing it? Wow. Right. So some of the questions that you should be asking while you're sitting with the mortgage protection and I have an entire video on this, but one thing you should be asking is, Mr. Cody, what other assets besides this life insurance policy you're going to get to the mortgage protection policy, what other assets do you have that would pay off the mortgage in the event of your death? Right. So it's asking simple questions like that. It's not invasive. You're not going, Cody, you got a 401k, how much you got in there? Right. Anyways, it could be like, dude, why do you need to know that? What does that have to do with anything? But if you're asking questions like Cody, you know, obviously, if something happens to you, if you, you know, outside of this life insurance policy, what other assets do you have that would pay off the mortgage in the event of you dying? So you can ask these questions to uncover dollars, which again, I think is very important. This is where I go back to asking good questions to get really good answers. But what I used to do is because I never understood how annuities work, I would uncover money. I was taught to ask these questions and uncover money. But then I would take, you know, maybe if they gave me a statement, I would take that back to the person mentoring me and go, okay, I've got this. They've got $30,000 in old 401k. What do we do with it? Right. And so through that process, I started really understanding these annuities. So this is how simple an annuity works. I told you the three things it does very well. But internally, annuities have indexes built inside of them, right? A lot of them just simple. They follow the S&P 500 index. They have caps. They have spreads. They have participation rates. And all that means is if the S&P 500 index goes up 5% and the cap on your annuity is two, that means your client is going to get 2% out of the 5% interest. The insurance company keeps the three, but that's an exchange. That's an exchange for if the market goes down 40%, your client gets 0% for that year. See how simple that is? So people who I don't understand this index thing, okay, the index is built to where if the S&P 500 goes up, your client's going to get a portion of it. If it goes down, they don't participate in the downturn. But in exchange for that, if the market's up 17% they're going to get three. So it's an exchange. In exchange for not losing any money. And so it's a really simple way to explain this to a client. Go and listen, there's got to be a give and take on everything. I understand this is not meant to hit home runs. This is meant to preserve your money, protect it, provide you an income. But in the meantime, we can grow your money on a moderate growth. I'm not, this is where coding people get in trouble by selling an annuity, calling it an investment. They're not investments. They're not built for that. They really are not built to be an investment. They're built to be a vehicle to provide income and safety. So if you look at annuity, the caps are how much it's going to go up. The participation rate is again, how much the index is going to participate in it. So it's 100% participation and the S&P 500 goes up 5%. They're going to participate in 5% or potential percentage of that. But here's where the income thrives. This is how the annuity thrives. So for all of you guys watching this and taking notes, this is where I want you to do it. I want you to take out a piece of paper. So Cody, on your piece of paper, I want you to draw a line down the middle of the piece of paper. I'm going to start a new one. So flip the page. Flip the page. I'm going to teach you how to sell an income annuity right now. Very simple. All right. So draw a line down the middle of the page. All right. On the left side of the page, I want you to put accumulated value. Okay. So the accumulated value is how much money I'm putting into an annuity, right? So I'm putting $100,000 and that's the money that I've accumulated that I'm putting into the annuity. But if you're selling an annuity for income, on the right side of your page, I want you to write income account balance. Okay. This is very important because this is understanding the differences between what an accumulated balance and what an income account balance is. The income account balance is the account that's going to derive the monthly income from. So on the right side of the page, that account is the most important account when you're trying to build up somebody's income base to receive an income from. So when somebody's getting a bonus or they hear this thing called a roll-up rate or a guaranteed roll-up rate, that means that on the right side of your page, most of the interest or the guaranteed interest is going towards that account because the goal is to get that account as high as humanly possible because the higher that I can get that account, the bigger their lifetime monthly payout is. And I do this with clients because some people don't understand how the difference between an income writer account value and the accumulated account value and it really throws people off. But the reality is that they are two different values. They are two different values and you need to be able to explain that properly because if you can simplify that to a client, and it makes sense to them going, listen, Cody, I'm not going to try to hit a home run here. We're not trying to get 17%. But what I am trying to do is grow this income account value as high as humanly possible so that you never run out of money. Is that fair? Very fair. And again, I know we're running short in time. I can go on this all day long, but I wanted just to quickly simplify how the difference between an accumulated account and the income account value works because the income account value is where this monthly payout is going to come from and that's such an important variable in this whole sales process. It is, man. You definitely simplify the account of it because annuities used to scare me to death. And they used to scare the account of me too because I didn't understand them. But again, Cody, I go back to this is where you need to become a student of the game. You need to become a student of the game and understand this because this is your job. This is your business. And if you're an insurance license and you're not selling annuities, dude, you are selling yourself short. For the love of God, you're leaving six figures every year on the table because you're not taking the time to learn that part of your business. It cost me a lot of money for six years. I'm not doing it. Right. Have you always been a student of the game, though, real quick? Yeah. Because you want to win, I mean. Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, you just always want to win, man. If you're going to do this, why not? You know what I'm saying? I mean, look, you can either come in here and coast like most advisors and agents do. Let's be real, man. Most people get content. They go out. They sell $10,000 a month of life insurance and life is good. And if that's what you want, great. But if you're saying, I want to have this massive organization, I want to be selling this and this and this. But your activity doesn't show it. You're lying to yourself. You are. If I'm saying that I want to have a billion dollar business or I want to be doing a million dollars a month, I better know what the heck I'm talking about and have the activity behind it to get to that level. That's right, man. That's good. That's so good, man. So how do they dive in and learn more? If they're like, OK, they're like me and they got two pages of notes now. And they're like, I think I could have 20 pages. This is great. RyanPolimini.com. Yeah. So sign up for the master class. I'm going to really break this down. And again, I don't really want to still be a pitch about the master class. But I do think it's important because I do want to teach this. I want to take the time. I want people to learn. People who I will tell you this, I've had a great feedback from people who are on my academy. Because in my academy, I really break down every single part of an annuity and how to understand the ins and outs of it and how to simplify the process and explain it to your clients. And so the first appointment that I'm on is really doing this, man. It's fact-finding. It's uncovering money, uncovering IUL money, uncovering annuity money. But the whole process is a flow. All right. So before we wrap up, I said there was a three-part system. So my first part to my sales process is the foundational planning, which we talk about covering the income, covering short-term needs, insurance planning. And even social security falls into that whole mix, too, is making sure they're maximizing social security. The second phase of my retirement planning is where we start talking about long-term planning. So this is where I start talking. This is where you have to understand the next level of understanding taxes because long-term financial planning is really about a few things. It's making sure that their money lasts, right? You're growing somebody's money. But it's also making sure that you're helping people mitigate taxes long-term. And I'm going to tell you this, most people have no idea what an RMD is, right? That stands for Required Minimum Distribution. And I will tell you that's one of the biggest killers of people's retirement because they don't understand that at 72, all of your money that is pre-tax is going to be subject to an RMD. And that can absolutely take somebody to the next tax bracket, which affects their entire system, their entire retirement, because they're going to be taxed on everything higher, right? So I focus on that long-term planning, growing their money long-term on anything that I didn't put in, maybe the income-producing annuity. And then phase three is estate planning. That's really important. We do estate planning here in the office as well. Because I want to be a shop where people can come to, and I don't have to send them somewhere. I don't have to send them to a CPI. I don't have to send them to an estate planner. We do it in-house. We do all parts of retirement because I want to have the client here and offer them all these different things, all these different services. And again, Cody has took me five years to get here after I left this. So I'm not saying that people need to do this and be a tax practice in a state. Look, it took me a long time to get here. But my point is, is partner with somebody who knows this stuff, right? Before I built this internally, I found people in the industry that I could partner with and say, listen, I don't think about taxes, but my partner over here, he does taxes and he's going to come in and help us put together a tax plan for you. You see what I'm saying? I didn't have to be the know-it-all. I don't think I still want to be the know-it-all. But I do know enough to be dangerous in all these different areas. So the third part is estate planning. And that's really important because when you're helping somebody with an estate plan, they know that you are with them for the long term. Because if I'm talking about estate planning, and I'm talking about Cody, when you die, I'm going to make sure Lauren is protected. We will make sure your legacy goes on. I'll make sure that your wife and your kids, they always remember what you did for them. But I'm going to be here for them when you are not here. That's important. That's why the long-term relationships are so valuable and so important. This is why it's bigger, Cody, than going in and making a sale and never talking to somebody again, which is what most insurance agents do. They go in, they make a sale. Half the time they even call them to deliver the policy. It shows up in the mail. They wonder why they have charge backs and persistency issues. We don't take that approach, man. I want to be in touch with my clients regularly. I want them to know that I've got their back. That's important. Exactly. Exactly. I love it. Ryan freaking Palomeini. Showing up and dropping the bizzles and the bombs the whole time, man. Again, it's a passion. I love what I do. And I think that if you're in this industry and you don't have this passion or the passion of Cody Askins, you have to ask yourself, is this for me? I am in this thing for the next 20, 30 years, man. So I'm going to be the best at it. And everybody that's in this, you're either going to be the best or you're just going to have the same year. And this is one thing I ask people when I'm coaching them is what were your sales last year? How much money did you make last year? Well, I made 100 grand. How much money did you make this year? I made 100 grand. Okay, so what you're telling me is you relived your first year over and over and over again. When are you going to get to the next level? Because if people are stuck at, I wrote $100,000 in life insurance the last two years, great. But what are you going to do to get to the next? How are you going to go to $200,000? You have to think differently to get to that level. So these are the kind of things, Cody. If you're going to be in this thing for the long haul, for you better not be living the same year over and over and over again. So true. I mean, nobody wants to look back in a decade and say, you know what? I didn't grow at all. I made the same amount of money every year. This is amazing. That's it, man. That's awesome. That's it, man. So listen, I hope that this has been a little bit of value added. Again, you and I will spend a lot more time. I wish I had more time to go through this. But this is why I'm doing the masterclass because I really, you had no idea about a masterclass before us. I don't want people to think this has been like a promotional thing for it. This is something that I've been passionate about doing. I'm going to do on a quarterly basis. But this is why I want to do this because I want to spend four hours with people and really record it, let people understand my mindset and the whole process so that everybody can have a great 2021. I love for people to come back and say because of this training, because I watched your interview with Cody Askins, you know, I did over a million dollars in annuities when I never wrote an annuity for. That, you and I, I know for people like you and I, that is more valuable than you and I making an override on anything. To me, that's more valuable. Totally, totally. Now, now we're talking. Now we're talking. Dude, right? Paulimini, thank you so much for being on today. Thank you for having me. Appreciate you, buddy. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're going to love. It's right there. Click on it. See you next time. All right, we're adding space. We want to give you a look around. We're adding 6,500 square feet first curaging marketing company. It's literally right across the street an additional building in the same complex. So let's take a look around. Let's go.