 When Mutual and I parted ways, you know, I was the number one general manager with Mutual Hall at the time and this was back in 2014. When we parted ways, it was not a pretty departure, you know, it was, you know, it was not and most people would just kind of crawl up in a ball and feel sorry for themselves and, but I knew without a shout of a doubt that this was my, this was opportunity for me to, for my children and my wife and so forth, all my, you know, friends and peers and, you know, et cetera could see I can bounce back. What are some things that along the way that you've learned and some things that have helped to get you where you are, maybe some, some tips that other agents can learn from, maybe, maybe it's business related, maybe it's interest related, maybe it's life related. I learned several years ago that I've always prided myself being the hardest working person there is and, and that's just the way I am today. Not arrogance is just, it's just, it's got to be me and just because I have to be, but I'm the hardest working person in our office, you know, even today. You know, it works more hours than works harder, but I think it's a lot more than just working hard because I do, you know, I work hard and, you know, if you ever come to my office, I'm not talking, I'm not playing, I am, I am, you know, focused and driven to, to succeed. So I think the biggest thing is, is that I heard this many, many, many years ago and, and I mean year, early in my career, and it's something that's always stuck with me. I never forgotten. Success is very simple. It truly, truly is. Success is very, very simple. And the way, the reason success is so simple is this right here. If you have a successful Monday, have a successful Tuesday, have a successful Wednesday, have a successful Thursday, have a successful Friday, you have, you've had a successful week. You put enough successful days together, all of a sudden put enough successful weeks, successful months, you got a successful career. And that's always driven me is every day has to be successful. You know, and so every day I go into the office, I always have a, you know, if you don't have an intent, and this is just my, if you don't have an intent to have a successful day, the easiest thing to do, there's two easy things to do is blow money and, and waste time. You know, there's hardly nothing easier to do than to, than to waste money and waste time. And, and so kind of talking about the time here is there's so many people that's their office for, you know, 10 hours, 12 hours a day. But are they truly successful? Are they truly doing what they need to do? And so you have to have a purpose and an intent to have get something accomplished. If every day, and I'm serious when I say this, and I know you've heard 1000 people say this, but, but it's a true statement that I know, if every single day you on your ride home, if you truly ask yourself, what did I accomplish today? What did I get? What did, what did I do that today that made a difference? And if you're honest with yourself, if you're truly honest with yourself, you'll surprise yourself. Yeah, you will. And because, you know, I've always joked, you know, and I've, I've hired, you know, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of agents and hundreds of employees over my 30 years. And, and I always joked with everybody, every agent I ever hired, I had this one statement I said, and I always tell them, I said, you know, if you work for me, all you have to do is work half days. And they look at me like, what are you talking about half days? And, and I say, well, you choose any 12 hour period you won't, you just choose which half you want to work any 12 hour and I truly believe that. And, because if you've worked 12 hours a day, and you are, and I'm not saying everybody has to work 12 hours a day, but I do. And you are focused, you're driven, and you have a purpose, and you know what you're going to get accomplished, you got to go in there with, with an idea of exactly what has to be accomplished today. And so a situation to where there's no chance of failure. So, but, but the thing about it is, is that if you have enough, enough successful days, you can turn that that into a successful career. So, yeah, you definitely can. But if you're hit and miss, you know, successful Monday, a bad Tuesday, bad Wednesday, successful Thursday, you're going to be a roller coaster for your entire career. And your, your career is just going to be an up and down situation, instead of having that, you know, just that, that curve that continues on the upward bound. So, I love that. I love that. And you know what, I think that, I mean, there's two things to, to really, it has happened that you've said or they've done in my life in some way that, literally back and support that up. The first one is your motto, you know, I've said it, I've said it before, a lot of the agents listed and probably heard that, you know, never let anyone out hustle you. And, you know, before practices, games, work, school, didn't matter, you know, as a kid, that was, that was the motto. That was the same. That was, you know, something that came to life time and time again. And the other thing was, I remember when I was about to go to work, I don't know if you've ever heard me tell this, I don't know, maybe you have. It was three, it was 330 p.m. on a Friday, I was supposed to go to work from 4 to 10 p.m. part time at Little Apple Market in Rogerville, Missouri, supposed to work for six hours. And about 330, I'm throwing up, I don't feel well, I don't want to go to work, you know, and I come to you and I'm like, hey, I don't want to go, you know, I just, I'm puking, I just, I don't want to go to work, I don't feel well. And you said something that day that I still remember today, which is forces me to show up whether I feel like it or not, which is, you said, you do whatever you want to do, but you know what I would do. And that has woke me up then, and obviously I went to work that day, you know, what do you do after that. But I've never seen you miss a day of work, you know. I've fortunately I've never missed a day of work. Very fortunate. And ever since the day I turned six, I started working the day I turned 16 in a meat department. And on my 16th birthday, I started work. And I've never missed a day of work since that day. And I've been fortunate. And, you know, like with you throwing up, I know a situation to where, you know, we just got through your drink a lot. And, you know, you know, so now today, obviously, if I were contagious or something, I would stay home. But, you know, in any way, but, but I've forced I've never missed a day of work in my entire life and due to sickness or, you know, illness or anything of that nature. And, and it's just, you know, I'm thankful that I haven't done that. So, and hopefully I can, you know, continue that for many, many, many years to come. Why insurance? Like, you know what I mean? Because if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be doing any of this. Well, I tell you, whenever I started, there was a gentleman in our church by the name of Ron Duncan. And so Ron Duncan is he owns several furniture stores. And so we're, I mean, he's, you know, we're in the same church together. And so Ron is needing some sales people. And, and I'm in, you know, I'm fresh out of high school. And I'm in college at this time. And, and so Ron says, Hey, if you want to earn some extra money, you can sell furniture for me. Well, I'm thinking I'd go to a store, you know, put on a tie, wait for people to come in. And he's, and so I'm, and I said, I'm very interested. He says, Okay, come meet me, meet with me. And so we met and he gives me a box. He hands me a index card box. And so I opened the index card box and there are pictures and they're categorized living room suits, dining room suits, mattresses, appliances, you know, just categorized pictures of these, you know, different household items that you could purchase. And I said, Okay, so what I would do with this box? He said, You go out and knock doors. And I'm like, I do what? And he says, You got knock doors. And he said, And you sell this furniture. And I said, Well, how much do I make? And he says, Well, on a living room suit, he said the our cost is $400. So everything you sell it over $400, we split. And he said, So he said, There's always a 300% markup in furniture. He says, If you sell for 1200, you'll make 400. I'll make 400. And we'll pay the 400 to the, you know, to the, to the manufacturer. And I said, Okay, I said, This sounds like a pretty good deal. So I go out. And so I go out and I just start knocking doors like crazy. I'm making a lot of money, a lot of money, selling furniture door to door, just basically knock on the door. Hey, I'm Brian Askins, I'm with Duncan furniture. And I'm out here today to see if you have a need for any furniture at all, any appliances, living room suits, bedroom suit, I've got pictures of all the things I have to offer. And, and I would get in a lot of houses. And the kind of the funny story is, we, and I did this, I did that for a couple of years. And anyway, I did so well, I ended up training his son, his son just got out of high school, and he wanted me to train his son. So I went to Mississippi, train his son, I went to Mississippi, help him open up a furniture store called furniture factory outlet, or I forget the name of it now, but something like that. But he had stores in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. And so I would go around and help train some of his people. And, and so, but the, the funny story was is that so anytime that, you know, because most of these individuals didn't have great credit. So they're, so the credit applications that were getting higher interest rates. And so anytime that, and we had to keep it on the books for so many months, and I don't remember the number of months, but anytime that some person faulted on the payments, we had to go repossess the, the furniture. So not only was I the salesman, I was also the person to go repossess it. And I owned a little s 10 truck back then. And so I would go and, you know, if they didn't make the payments, I'd have to go take the furniture back out of the house. And so, and so I was a repossess furniture also. And nothing fun, but it, you know, it's just part of the part of the business part of the deal. And so anyway, so that was, that was something that was very interesting. You know, it was a very, very interesting little deal. And so think about all the lessons about business and sales and, and building value and selling a product they can't even see. They start looking at a freaking picture, you know, and, and, and warm people up and building relationships with people and, and, you know, giving them a no like and trust you pretty quick, you know, gosh, most people would never want to do that or would, and about 99% people would fail at doing that. But man, think about the valuable lessons you learned from doing that. That's awesome. I made a lot of money and learned a lot of valuable lessons. I think that really kind of taught me how to sell. And you sell furniture out of the box, you can sell pretty much anything. And so I, and that, you know, and I remember, you know, asking Ron, I said, who's your top salesman? And, and it was a guy down in some part of Mississippi, I think it was Sardis Mississippi or whatever, I can't remember exactly, but anyway, and I said, how much does he sell and so forth. And my goal was just to beat him. And I did. But I've always been very competitive in that situation. So, but it was a, it was a great lesson. And one thing Ron Duncan told me back then. And, and I've kind of heard the, the, the mentors in my life, they've always said something that kind of stuck with me. And this is kind of a, it's a crazy thing, but I've always thought it even today. He said, let me tell you the character of a man. He said, I can tell you real quick how to find out the character of a man. And I thought he'd be something really in depth and you know, something. And I said, how's that? He said, just look at his shoes. And I said, what do you mean? He said, if his shoes are clean, he has great character and he's going to, and he's a, he's an individual that cares about himself. But if his shoes are dusty and dirty, that's an individual that doesn't care about himself. And it's somebody that you probably don't want to be a part, you know, don't want to mentor with. And, and so little things like that, you know, and like Milton Brock, which was also another mentor of mine. He'd, he'd said something when I became the general manager at Mutual of Omaha after, you know, Milton had retired and I was a district sales manager with him and I was replacing Milton, Milton hadn't retired. I'm sorry. He'd went to AAA property casually out in Northern California. He retired shortly after that. But one thing he's, he told me he said, he said, the key to success. And I remember him saying this, he said the key to success. He said, is always take care of the people. And, and so anyway, so anytime someone tells me something like it, you know, I never forget these little things. And he said, always take care of the people. And whenever I left, or I'm sorry, whenever he left and I took over, and I opened the desk desk drawer the very first day, he had a note in there, I still have it in my office today. He has, he had a note written on just a, just a notepad. And it says, and it says, always take care of the people Milton Brock. And, and so, you know, one thing that, you know, I really pride myself on is, is really taking well care of our people, you know, our staff or agents and, and doing all we can and, and for those individuals, you know, because and, and, you know, and Milton also had told me he said, he said, he said, you know, one of the keys to success, he said, it's surround yourself with the right people. He said, if you surround yourself with the right people, you can't fail. And so good little things like that. And, and I just, I remember those things. That's awesome. That's awesome. This has been good. This has been some, some stories have been mixed with some, I've personally, some of the stuff I've heard, some of it I haven't heard, you know, wow, it's been really, what do you think about as you wrap up, what comes to mind with the phrase? Because that's kind of, that's the theme of this virtual event. You know, you can't fail if you don't quit. I see so many insurance agents quit every single day and they only fail because they chose to quit. I believe success is a decision in this business especially. And if you just choose to keep pushing, even when it gets hard, not quit, what comes to mind when I say that? Probably what comes to mind most is every, every one of us are going to have situations in our life that don't go the way we want them to. There's, there's a lot of heartaches in life. Life is hard. You know, life is tough. And there's so many people that when life gets hard, life gets tough, they give up. And instead of, you know, like, I never let y'all children complain about anything. You know, you had, you know, you were blind in your left eye. You know, you, you were, we're not sure if you were bit by a dog when you were very young and then you got hit by a softball bat when you were very young. So we're not sure which one of those did that. But I never let you use that as a, as a complaint at all. You know, my daughter had the same hip disease I had. And I never let her use that as a, as a, as a reason not to succeed. There's lots and lots of things that happened throughout life and to where we could easily just say, you know, hey, I give up and I understand it. Now it's, it's hard, you know, and the easy thing is to give up, but I don't care what happens in life. We've got to keep pushing forward and got to make the best of every situation. One quick story that I could probably tell you that, you know, that when mutual not parted ways, you know, I was the number one general manager with mutual haul at the time. And this was back in 2014. And when we parted ways, and it was not a pretty departure, you know, it was, you know, it was not. And, and most people would just kind of crawl up in a ball and, and feel sorry for themselves. And, and, you know, but I knew without a shout of a doubt that this was my, this was an opportunity for me to, for my children and my wife, and, and so forth, all my, you know, friends and peers and, you know, et cetera, could see I can bounce back. And so I immediately, when that happened on February 3rd, on February 4th, I'd already applied for a new LLC, Secure Interance Group. I had started contacting carriers to, for contracts, and I didn't let the dust settle. And to where, you know, most people have taken off for a month or two months and try to figure things out. I didn't do those things. I did not want to part of corporate America again, ever again. And so I chose, you know, I knew I wasn't going back to corporate America, and even though I had many, many, many opportunities and with substantial amounts of money, just did not want to be a part of that again. And I wanted to have control of my own destiny going forward. Didn't want anybody ever to ever, ever to have control of my set, my situation ever again, I wanted me to have control. And so, and so I knew that I had an opportunity here to teach my children, I don't care what happens in life, that you have an opportunity to make the best of the situation. And now, six years later, I'm not glad it happened the way it happened, but I'm tickled that that happened. And because I'm happier now than I've ever been, because I don't have to answer to corporate, you know, and it's, you know, and, and the great thing about it is, is that once I did this, you know, my wife was telling me to go get a corporate job and, you know, how can you turn that type of money in, you know, we used a enormous amount of our savings that we had, we had saved up to start secure insurance group, more money than most people ever dream of used an enormous amount. But I knew in people like, well, why are you taking that risk? To me, it wasn't a risk. I knew insurance. I knew how to build an agency. I'd done it. And to me, it wasn't a risk per se. It was, and I knew that we would be, you know, we're at today. And I know we've got a long way to go. We'll get there. I'm very, very confident of that. So once I did that, my wife got behind me 100%. She, she was my first employee, you know, as far as the staff person, and she's still with me today. And, you know, just tremendous, tremendous woman just couldn't, you know, couldn't have a better partner in life. And so there's so many things that happen in life that we could easily, easily, easily take the easy road and just, you know, not push on. But regardless of what happens in life, we have to just make the best of every situation. And because, you know, like you said earlier, if you don't quit, you can't fail. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're gonna love. It's right there. Click on it. See you in there.