 and we're live. All right, Cassie's closed the door. We're getting prepped for the 8% virtual conferences coming up tomorrow, March 5th and 6th. All right, I want to encourage you to get on the train. All right, to join this event. I'm in my new office. Okay, we even got a brand new goal in the back. Maybe we'll shoot some hoops together. Okay, all I know is I want you. I need you and you need to be at this event as well. Okay, I'm gonna keep pushing this thing because 8% virtual is coming to you to help you succeed and to be better, right? End of story. Okay, so I want you to think about what you want to get out of this event, right? Because here's one thing I've learned. I've learned, okay, I've learned that it's up to the learner to get the information, right? You have to decide what you're going to get out of the virtual conference before you're going to get something out of it, okay? That's what I know, okay? Is when I go to an event, when I go to a conference, when I show up, when I do this, that, or the other thing, I go there with a focus on what I'm gonna be learning before I actually start to learn it, okay? So welcome, we're gonna talk about 8% virtual, what you can expect from all these amazing speakers, okay? And what I do know is, I want you to answer the question, what are you hoping, right? And provide it in chat, in comments for me as we're live on YouTube and Facebook. What are you hoping to get out of the next two days, right? Like what are you struggling with? What do you need to see? What do you hope to learn? What do you want to make sure that you leave with so that it continues in your business to where you have the biggest year you've ever had, okay, because you made the decision now, okay? You made the decision now, okay? So I'm gonna shoot from here, okay? If I make it, all right? If I make it, you have to attend, you have to register, and you have to register someone else, okay? Are we gonna agreement? Okay, those that are on, as we're live, okay? As I shoot a hoop, if I make it, either way you have to register, if I make it, you have to register somebody else, okay? You have to register someone else. Oh, you gotta register somebody else, okay? So you gotta go invite someone, all right? Come on, Daniel, I hit it, bro, I hit it, okay? So you gotta go invite someone else to this event. I'm continuing to show up and promote, right? When you want something in life bad enough, you have to show up and promote. Like for you selling insurance in your local office, okay? You have to show up and promote. There's a lot of us that we struggle to show up and promote, right? Like we struggle to show up and promote typically because we don't believe in what we are selling, right? Which is a big problem, by the way. Like you need to believe in what you sell. So the question is, okay, Steven, thank you, sir. Mr. Steven Schmidt, there we go. Okay, go to 8%virtual.com to register, 8%virtual.com to register, okay? Is what do you want to get out of this thing? And how do we make sure that you succeed? Okay, what do you wanna get out of it and how do we make sure that you succeed, right? So make sure to 8%virtual.com, all right? So that actually does go to several platforms at once. We're using StreamYard and I'm learning it, okay? We've got three, I've got three different monitors in here and I'm trying to figure out how I can use all three of these. I turned all these around so that I can hang out with you guys for a few minutes, okay? So I turned them around and went the other direction. Normally I'm facing backwards, right? Towards the wall with a couple of canvases, okay? Today I'm gonna spend some time with you, Mr. Matt. Come on now, come on, Matt. Valeria, Charmaine, Steven, dude, it's gonna be ridiculous, it's gonna be pumped, right? We got Brian Tracy, we got Les Brown. Like we had a lot of big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big time names, okay? We got some massive names to make sure, to make sure that big, big, big time names. It goes down as the biggest, best event you've ever seen, okay? Shared the whole company about the conference, Matt. Thank you, sir, okay? We're pushing for 10,000 registrations. I don't think I've ever pushed for anything this hard in my entire life, okay? Also some of the speakers are gonna be popping in tonight and saying hello to you, answering some of your questions, spending some time with you and helping you make sure that you also take that next level in your life as well, okay? So looking forward to seeing Les Brown. Matt says, dude, huge lineup and Les Brown saved my life. Les Brown is a freak, man. Like, you know what Les Brown's gonna do? Les Brown is going to deliver. Les Brown is going to deliver the knockout punch. Les Brown is going to deliver the knockout punch at the event, okay? Valeria's excited for July. I'm excited for July, okay? If you're, you know what? You guys need to be hanging out with me today, right? These last few days. Have I not had some fun in my office? Or have I not had some freaking fun, okay? My custom CA boxing gloves, all right? Like, you're gonna enjoy what you do, right? I love what I do. We got a fun office. We got a fun culture. We've got multiple buildings. Like, we are committed to helping people succeed in a lot of different ways, by the way, okay? Oh, there's a break. There's a break. There's a miss, okay? There's a miss, all right? What are you guys most excited about? As you're jumping in on YouTube, Facebook, what are you most excited about for these next several days, okay? I'm waiting on some answers and some comments on what you're excited about. Here's what I'm most excited about, okay? I'm excited that when I get around big time people, everything starts to change for me, right? The whole game starts to get better and starts to change. When I show up, I expect to get results. When I go dunk on Joe Campert, okay? Everything starts to get better because I showed up and committed to winning, right? So the question is, are you committed to winning, okay? Les and Roger Short, Matt, Roger Short's a freak, man. He's unbelievable. He's phenomenal, okay? He's really, really, really good. Hang on with me tonight. I may be giving away some money, okay? I may be giving away some tickets to the 8% Live in Dallas because I know what we are doing is gonna help a lot of people, okay? And also this event, 8%virtual.com, 8%virtual.com, 8%virtual.com, you can see it on the ticker at the bottom, is totally free by the way, okay? Is totally free. You have to make sure that you show up and get in the game, all right? I'm gonna keep showing up in your life, whether you like it or not, okay? Some of you are like, dude, I don't want you to show up anymore. I'm showing up, okay? I'm committed. I'm in. Whether you like it or not, I'm gonna be in your life for the rest of your life, okay? That's why I committed to it. So I'm doing it, okay? I'm doing it, all right? What we got going on? Will says so true. Words from Timon that became great, that became true at Kuru's. Get around people doing big things. Dude, that's it, man. That's what it's all about, okay? You have to do big things. You have to commit to winning. You have to commit to making sure that you get in the game, all right? Steven says, where's six foot nine? Landon comes over here, I'm gonna dunk on him, okay? Guaranteed, all right? Matt says, you're awesome, Cody, thanks for everything. You know, I just enjoy helping people. I learned a long time ago, okay? It is back when I was a new agent. I had a manager ask me like, hey, can you go drive four to five hours to help a couple of new agents? They're struggling, Cody, they're not making any money. They don't know what to do. Can you help them, right? I decided to go help them. I drove four to five hours away to go help them. I showed up to help them because I thought, you know what, if someone's asking me to help them, maybe I should be helping them. And what I learned is, I had a passion for helping people, right? I had a passion for seeing people win. I had a passion for helping people be successful. And I went and helped these two new insurance agents that were struggling and weren't making any money. I drove up to Northern Missouri to help them. We made like five, four or five sales in one day. And I, cold door knocking, we sold life insurance together. I made them like four or five sales and then I drove home and came home. And I learned in that moment that I was meant to help people. I got more satisfaction out of helping them than anything else in my life, right? Because I showed up, okay? Nate Haschick, I showed up and I committed to helping someone else, right? I want to challenge you to help other people in 2021. When I made those five sales and I came home, I realized that four to five hours, those are rookie numbers, got to pump those up from the truck driver. Yeah, dude, for real. Four hours is a long, I don't like driving, man. That's a long drive for me. And, but it's nothing to a truck driver, Daniel. You're right, bro. Come on. I learned that I was meant to help agents succeed. I was meant to train agents. That story taught me a lot. And so when I get a chance to help agents, fast forward five years later, we start the YouTube channel, which has over 31,000 agents subscribed now because we want to see people win. So we're committed to making sure that we do our part to help insurance agents win. So there's the reason why you guys see me pushing so hard to put on a free event. Like people can say whatever they want. I'm bringing some of the biggest names in the world to you, to your home for free. Like I'm taking all excuses away. Well, the speaker line, it's not good enough. It's definitely good enough, okay? Brian Tracy, Les Brown, Tom Hagna. Starts tomorrow at 9 a.m., by the way, the pre-show does, okay? Well, I don't wanna travel. It's virtual, right? I don't have the money, it's free, right? Like what other excuse could you actually give me? I don't believe there is another excuse. I don't believe there is another excuse that you could actually give me that would validate anything else, okay? Because I know that my heart's in the right place. And I'll, dude, why don't we bring Jeff and Matt up at the same freaking time, man? How about that, okay? Jeff and Matt. Hey, there's my buddy, Jeff Root there. What's up, fellas? What's up, man? Oh, Jeff just got out of that ice storm. Hey, I've got a question for you there, Cody. If you can turn around and sync that three-pointer right now, I'm gonna send Jeff a $100 bill. What? What? Oh! Oh, I knew it, man, that's why I made that bet. Who knows I would have made a backwood dinner? Thank you guys for jumping on, man. And Jeff, I'm excited to be at your event. You're really soon. The digital life insurance agent master, by the way. By the way, that's awesome. Yeah, it's gonna be good. I'm pumped for tomorrow. I'm getting this 8% virtual thing. I'm talking about actionable ways to grow your life insurance business, make it more profitable and cash flow better. Just five actual ways that we teach our agents, at least. Just giving it all that we teach everything inside our agency. Who doesn't want that? As you guys are doing on Facebook and YouTube, who doesn't want actionable tips and steps to help them make money? Okay, when I think about selling insurance in a large capacity, you were two of the dudes that I think about the most, by the way. Right, I just do. Matt, freaking crazy numbers. Jeff, doing crazy things. Jeff was the first insurance podcast I ever started listening to, right? Matt was the first file expense guy I ever started following. Like, you guys have meant a lot to me over the years, and I know you're gonna mean a lot to others as you get off in the morning. Yeah, I saw the star-studded lineup you have. I'm just lucky to be on that cast that you put together. I don't know, man. Jeff shared what he was gonna be sharing. What's Mr. Mungia gonna be sharing this week? I'm going over how to keep fighting no matter what, when all the chips may seem like they're down, how to never give up, how to keep fighting, and how to weather the storm. Just like me and Jeff found a way to weather this ice storm that we had a couple of weeks ago, and we come out much smarter and better at the end, although it sucked during the timeframe, but you learn things along the way, and you get stronger and smarter and better from it. So I think that's gonna be my message. If the two of you got in the ring, who would win? I think, well, last time I saw him was the trippest. He has a lot of ring on him. He's on crutches, I win. He has a lot of ring on him. He's on crutches, I win. He has a lot of ring on him. He's on crutches, I win. He's on crutches, I win. He's on crutches, I win. That's right, the last time we were together, Cody, we were on stage on the same panel at 8% in Asia, there in Tennessee Titanland, where the Titans play. And yeah, actually it would have made it easier for me to win. Jeff's not thinking about, I have even more reach, hitting them with a crutch, but now I'd have to give it to Jeff. I love it, man, I love it. Actually, you know what, Ms. Galen, why we might as well bring you up here too. I see you down there, now we've got all four of us hanging out. Hey, how are you guys? You know Jeff and Matt? I don't know. I think I know Jeff, right? Yeah. Yeah, so how are y'all? We are good. Good, good, just get people pumped up for this thing tomorrow, just so pumped with how many, like, who you got to do with Cody? Like, how do you work this magic, man? Dude, you got to constantly look me in promotion mode, you know, you got to get a crazy lineup and you got to just keep fighting, keep pushing, as Matt's going to talk about this weekend, Ms. Galen, they shared what they're going to be speaking on, what can the attendees get to learn from Ms. Galen? You know, I think we're going to learn that we got to keep our attitudes right. You know, we've got to keep out in front of our clients, we've got to make sure we're calling them, got to make sure we're talking to them, but I think more than anything to make sure that we're just feeling good. You know, I think a lot of us had a little bit of COVID, not really the COVID, but the COVID, you know, being shut indoors and not being able to go do what we want to do. And I think people got tired of that. You know, here in Texas, the mass fan got lifted and we're 100% open next Wednesday. So, I'm starting succession talk, you know, I'm thinking that's probably going to be the next subject going around, I know, too politically incorrect right there, but I'm looking forward to the virtual this week, you know, and I'm really excited about what's coming down the pike. I think after last week, Cody and I, Cody, I can't believe you look as good as you did on Tuesday, I mean, because you had to have been tired, but it was a ton of fun last weekend and we're going to have some of that same group this weekend and I think just keeping people energized. That's right, that's right. I have a question for the three of you because you are three absolute titans in the industry. Okay, it's amazing, we got all three of you with me. I don't know what I did right, but here we go, okay. Here's one question I had that I want to have each of you answer. If you had to say a new agent needs to get really good at X, what would X be? Jeff, kick us off. Your presentation, that's the one thing that separates everybody in our business is understanding and feeling comfortable and your president really nailing it every single time, making it the same every single time. I mean, you can preach activity and all that, but without a good presentation, to me, you're just gonna burn out. Oh, I love it, I love it, good answer, man. Matt, what do you got, sir? I would say getting in front of people is priceless. So for me, one thing, of course, like Jeff said, there's many things, we all know that. You have to be excellent at something, you have to be good at all the little things along the way, but getting in front of people, so whether that's buying leads, the right leads, or your phone script, your doorknock script, you gotta get in front of people to offer your product no matter what product you're selling. That's right, that's good too. Miss Galen, what do you think? I like that tee up, because they took two of the ones I would have said, but it's always back to don't fail to plan, have a plan, because if you don't, you're planning to fail. And I think what these two guys said was spot on, that's part of the plan. And if you've got that down, you will go nowhere but success, because focus is the driver, you know, focus, focus, focus. Yeah, you guys all do and show up and put on and speak and train at a lot of events throughout the years. I've seen that, right? Jeff has Digital Life Tristage at Mastermind. Matt, I've seen you guys do a lot of training, tour events, Galen speaks at every event on the planet. What, why, and we'll start with Galen's time and go in reverse order, why have events like 8% virtual been had such an impact on you and your life and your career? Well, one, it motivates me. You know, I don't think motivators can motivate unless they're motivated. And I read a lot of books, you know, I brought them to the conference last week, 8% Nation, I'm gonna bring some. I love reading other success stories. And I think that that is what motivates me. And when I'm around that energy in that room, it makes me wanna go do better than I did before I arrived because there's always somebody we can learn from. So that's why me. What, I love that, I love that, anything Matt? I think these events are always fun and important because the insurance industry can be a very lonely job sometimes. And sometimes it feels like you are the only one out there. You know, especially when you're struggling, you have a bad day or a bad couple of days. It's like, man, am I the only knucklehead out here? I have no one to be here to lift my spirits up. So I think sometimes knowing, getting it together with these events and meeting new people and putting faces to voices, to names and chatting at dinners and talking about strategies that work over dinners and breakfasts and learning from some great speakers, not just great speakers, but great agents and agency partners and agency owners and whatever. And just learning a little bit from each one of them, I think is what's so great about having these events. And then the people that you work with, just getting around them and letting them know that they're not all alone out there. Oh, that's good. How about for you, Jeff? Yeah, I mean, for me, it's just getting with other people in the trenches, you know, doing the things you're doing and having those conversations every single day. Even on the phone, I pick up stuff, but when you're in person and, you know, face to face with somebody, having a conversation, looking them in their eye, you know, you've gone through the same struggles, going through the same things, probably have some of the same challenges and kind of working through those through conversation. I mean, that's where you get some really, really good insights because something could be working well for you. Like, I've been doing it for a while, it works great and I'll pick up something extra to add on to it, you know? Every day, learning, especially at events, I mean, you really remember how you feel at these events, having these conversations. And I never forget those moments. Even, you know, we can have this moment right here, all four of us talking, but when we get in person, like I'll always remember, you know, what we talked about and to me, that's what it's all about, so. That's huge. I've been saying, Zoom's not the room. You know, I love the room. And I know they're taking Dr. Seuss away, but you know, I've been known as the Dr. Seuss of the insurance industry. You know, Zoom's not the room. I mean, it's cool to see all you guys on Zoom and that's been great during COVID and I mean, my gosh, what a lifesaver. But it's not the room. It's not the energy, like you guys said. That's not, you're right, it's not the same. That energy is infectious, man. It's contagious. It's, you know, I mean, it's crazy how much it helps for those that are down and out. Matt, even Jelista, I believe, something like that on YouTube had a question for you guys and also for those watching, this is the best time to ask questions, right? You have three individuals that have dominated multiple different product lines in the insurance industry. They're all making significant incomes. They maybe weren't as successful, good-looking, wealthy or intelligent as they are today. Okay, so along the way, maybe they had some bumps in the road, you know? So Matt says, so make sure you guys are asking some questions, throw them in. Matt says, hey Cody, could you ask the speakers if they could only ask one question in a life insurance set, what would it be? Who wants to go? Jeff said he'll go. What's come up that's prompted you to want to buy life insurance? If you're working internet leads, what's come up in your life that made you fill out that form? That's a good, you know, an initial call that anybody can use that's working internet leads. I love that. It all depends on the lead. I know there's direct mail and everything else, but that's a good opener for the term life insurance agents out there. And it's a gift to the wine. Yeah, that's a gift. That's great. I would probably say, great decision to have me here today. Who are you wanting to protect with this life insurance? Who's that important person that's going to get the benefit of your good decision today? That's right. Good. No need for me to speak. I mean, they stole everything I was about to say. I don't know. 505K and final expense in one year. No, I think both of them are spot on. I mean, because I use both of those tactics when I'm with my client, you got to find their why, right? So what's their hot button? Why am I in front of you? What brought me here today, you know? And then what Gail said was, yeah, then you find out who they're looking to protect, right? And use that during the presentation, you know? Be using that name during that presentation to make it more real for them. Okay, Mrs. Jones. So when I drop off the check to your daughter, Samantha, for $100,000, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, right? Now you're making it real. Oh, it's so real. So real. Or we could use a play out of Fornier's book and say, are we going to kill Joe or Mary first? You know? I mean, that was the biggest takeaway of last weekend. I'm going to kill Joe first, so this is how you look. And then I'm going to kill Mary and this is how you look. I mean, I thought that was profitable. I was, I was like, that's intense, man. That was, it gets the attention, right? Steven on, Steven Schmidt, what's up, buddy, on YouTube says, what products do each of you focus on? You want me to go? Sure. We focus on everything. You know, we are Queen of the Bundled. That's right. But, you know, we love Med Stop. Obviously it's the bread and butter. And then of course, under age 65, you know, soon the federal government went in that, we got to stay in that market, you know? But I think cancer and dental vision and hearing are the best because I know what they do for people. Dental vision and hearing in a senior distribution just makes the seniors feel good about themselves. And then cancer keeps away the financial stress. And so there's always a way to bring that in. Yeah. When you guys get a chance to hear Gailen speak, you'll probably hear the story of why cancer insurance is so important and special to her. So, which is, which, thank you for sharing that at last week, last week's event, by the way, those. Let me piggyback off that because Gailen's actually helped our agency selling cancer and whatnot has come on, helped some of our newly found Medicare agents and, you know, side of the business. So, this is something that we're teaching our agents as well based on Gailen's training. So. Yeah. Well, I'll be Jeff for right now, but. Jeff, I'm sorry. I was looking at Matt, Jeff. All good. All good. Now, to answer Matt's question on here. Zoom's not the room. Right. We focus on life insurance, sort of term life insurance, and, you know, IULs and so on. And now we do a lot of final expense. I think it just cash flows better for agents. So agents kind of gravitate towards it. Just their simplicity of it all, getting paid quickly and whatnot. So for us, it's mostly life insurance products. Got into Medicare this last eight weeks. Yeah, for us, it would be final expense is what brought us to the dance many years ago. And then we, the light bulb came on. I started messing with Medicare about, it's been about six years ago, I guess now, but we really got intense with it. So Medicare Advantage, mainly. We do subs, of course, dental, cancer. What Gail said, and then we just added on ACA, under 65. I mean, it's a beautiful market right now, and that will feed our Medicare business for many moons. So that's kind of our specialty right now. And then we're bringing on annuities here in the next couple of months. I love it. I love it. Diversification. That's right. Matt also asked, hey, besides asking, what do you talk regarding life insurance on your spouse or children? What other questions could you ask to get the conversation started? Well, I always love to say, what income protection do you have set aside? You know, typically if you're selling life insurance in the younger ages, they don't have any money put back. And if you're in final expense, it could be a hit or miss. It could be they have no money or they're going final expense because they're older and they don't have time. But that's kind of what I always ask is, what income protection do you have set back? And if it's a senior, we'll use the word asset protection. So either one of those typically work for us. That's our end. We always ask, in this, we work, we're all telecells, so we get a lead in, is this coverage for you or is this for you and a loved one? And that kind of gets the conversation started. So when I say coverage for you and a loved one, or is this coverage for you or a loved one, it's for you or you and a loved one, just assuming it's already for them. So that's key in our presentation that we say every single time. That piece of mind is great. That's huge, man. I love that. That's smart. Well, and one of you said just a second ago, Dylan and I heard this weekend, one of you, I think it may have been Matt, said the word win, X, X, X, right? You kept talking. You said win instead of if. Was that you, Matt? Probably. If it was good, I'll take credit for it. I love it. Love it, I love it. What else would you guys like to share as we probably have a lot of new and struggling agents watching that's hoping to get to your level? I think tune in to all the speakers and everything they have to say. Again, you put together a star-studded cast of individuals who've been there, done that at the highest level, right? So we can always learn from that. If you wanna learn basketball, listen to what Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan have to say, did you just miss that again? I missed again. If you wanna know baseball, I mean, listen to the people who've been there, done that, have the scars to prove it. They'll save you time. They'll save you money by listening to them. So I think that's a huge thing. Time and money, it can be, so tune in. You're gonna get a lot of good ideas and hopefully it's gonna help a lot of people. And I think also remember, my dad used to have a saying, I'll leave out the first part, but we used to come in this world the same way and we're gonna go out the same way. So we're all people. No one's better than you. They may do something better than you, but no one's better than you. And I think one of the things that really helped team me up with everybody is last year on the virtual, I talked about being a 34 year over, not success. And I had more people that said thanks for that because I see a lot of these people on Facebook and I've written 10 apps for the week and I think I'm a loser. Or I've written six apps for the week and I think I'm never gonna get there. And I think one of the things that we've got to really get clear to everybody is that, you know, start goal setting. You know, nobody started playing Little League Baseball thinking day one minute one, I'm gonna be the next whoever. They just played for the love of the game. Then as they got to loving the game, they thought, oh, I love this so much. I might do this for a living. You know, nobody wakes up wanting to be an insurance agent. But when we get here, we all say the same thing. Best decision we ever made unless we quit right before everything just falls into place. And that's what I would tell an agent or anybody that's getting ready to watch. Everybody's story will be the same. It'll be, I struggled with this, I struggled with that. You're gonna hear lots of struggles because no one has ever succeeded without failure. No one. Failure is just part of the game. And it makes you better and it makes you appreciate it more. Hi, Eric. Hi. Hey. What's up? Good. I got a confession to make real quick. Now that Eric's on, he said he was gonna come on Cam and do his little bus dance he did the other night on that pole. Did you get on the pole? Yeah. I missed that. I did. Yeah, that was Thursday night. That was Thursday night when we got crazy. Oh yeah, I didn't get to go that night. Dang it. There's enough video out there of me. I gotta hop off here. I didn't wanna say goodbye. I'll talk to everybody tomorrow at the events and see you guys soon. Thank you, Jeff. Bye, Jeff. Bye. Hey guys, I gotta go as well. I think I made Jeff a little uncomfortable with my comments. So that's my cue to get out of here. I got you, don't worry. I'll see you at 8%. I got pole waiting. All right, guys. Y'all take care. Oh, my two favorite interviewers and I'm in the middle of y'all. That's pretty awesome. I need to take a picture of this. This is fantastic. Yes, yes. Maybe the best centerfold ever. There we go. I love it. I love it, I love it. Eric, welcome, bro. Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here, man, as always. I think Cody Askins is doing. I am supporting 100%. Thanks, man. You're a good dude. Galen, what makes Eric such a good guy, man? You know, I've known Eric for a lot. Gosh, what, five, six years? Maybe longer. I'm trying to think of all the trips we've been on. You know, one of the things that I think makes him a good guy is he's so humble. I am constantly coaching him on putting himself out there more, bragging about himself more. And I don't like total braggadocious people, but he's the opposite. You know, the thing that Eric's got going for him is he's a fantastic interviewer. He listens. You know, and that's the number one problem all insurance agents have is we are great at running this. We're not great at stopping this. And listening is a huge, huge benefit he has. And other than that, he's a great husband and a great dad and just a really great friend. Thank you so much, Gal. Like I said, I mean, I love being, I love being anywhere I can be with you guys. You know, Galen, every time that we get around, we love to have a couple drinks and start talking about life and business. And I love that we could talk about such a variety of things. We have history, you know? And that history is a big deal. And you know, that's one of the things I always tell insurance agents. Remember one thing that in this business, it's a very small circle, smaller than you think. And everybody knows everybody and that everyone's connected in one way or another. So it's always important that you don't burn bridges and you make sure that, you know, the people we work with that we respect because it is a small world. And I think when we get into conferences, it's never more evident than when we're at the conferences. So you're gonna love what I told Cody before he got on. I came up with a new rhyme, Eric. Zoom is not the room. I love the room with all the energy, you know? And I did tell him they killed Dr. Seuss this week, but, you know, I guess I'm gonna take the place. But I think it's interesting watching all these folks that have, you know, I was talking to Cody about all the different conferences he had when he and Andy and I were sitting and talking. And I was like, you know, I heard about you three years ago and, you know, it's crazy how your thing has grown, how big this thing we was at, that we was at. We were at last week, that was massive fun. I know I went real Southern there, but, you know, it was so much fun because it was almost like, oh my gosh, these people still exist. I'm so excited to just be amongst people. And it was crazy how everybody just, you know, connected and there were a lot of new people. You and I had even got to meet face to face that were coming up to us. So Cody, I'll tell you this story, you'll love this one. So I'm sitting at the airport and I'm waiting on Sean and Scotty. And this lady walks up to me and I'm waiting on Rebecca Davis and she goes, you're famous. And it was one of the people coming to the event and I've talked to this lady several times. Her name is Jessica. And so she said, would you sign this for me? And I said, I will. So this lady next to me, this little elderly lady sitting between me and her and she said, so are you a singer in Memphis? Cause you look really familiar. And I might need to get your autograph. And I'm like, no, I sing great in the car and in the shower, but I'm an insurance agent. And she goes, oh, okay. She was like, well, I'll go now. And then she wouldn't even waiting on the same plane we were going on. She was just sitting there randomly. Rebecca Davis and Renee and I, we were all laughing. It was hysterical. That's what was funny. Yeah. It's what I'm learning is you get the three of us and Justin, you get the four of us together. It's dangerous. Yup. Is he not joining us today? I don't know. We'll see, I guess. I need to wear his phone now. Come on, JB. One of the things I want to say real quick, Cody, and I've called Cody to see that for the longest time I've been in the business helping insurance agents be able to grow, get in the business, be able to level up. And I never really, I guess I didn't really take much initiative towards going to the next level myself of getting on stages and speaking in public and doing all that. And Cody, when he first put together 8% Nation in 2018 was one of the first people to give me the ability to start on stage. And I thanked him at the last conference. I really, really wanted him to see me speak. I just want it because I feel like he's been able to see my progression getting on stage. And I've had some help from other people too with some coaching. Brandon Clay's been a great coach of mine to help me with when I'm on stage to make sure that I keep the people engaged. And so it was, to me, last weekend was really awesome because Cody sat there and he watched the whole thing. He took some notes for me, like a good friend would. But it was just awesome to have that happen to basically have Cody sitting there watching me because it's always me watching him. It's always me watching him on stages and speaking to people and helping people in a big way. And it's really, I really wanna thank you. And just because I don't know if you know this, Cody, but I tell a lot of people when they ask about me and they ask about the sales system and they ask about are you recruiting and all that stuff? I said, no, to be honest, it's in my career in the past 15 years, it's normally always been you're either an insurance agent or you're an agency. But I said, but Cody actually start to carve out a new niche, a consultant. And I said, that's where I'm at now. I'm not in the recruiting area, I'm not in the agent area, I'm more in the consulting niche now. And it's something that we have Cody asking to thank for because you carved that niche out. And I think that that's gonna be more people that are gonna end up following in that path. So I just wanted to say publicly so everyone can hear, like you are the man, thank you for that. Dude, you're the man, buddy, thank you. He's so sweet. He's always so freaking nice, right? What's funny is you're like the most humble, thank you. You're like the most humble person. I know I'm grabbing a standing mat, some sand on the carpet. You're like the most humble person I know. You know, like you are one of the most talented people I've ever met that doesn't even realize it, you know? And Gailen was probably talking about me slightly, even though she won't admit it of someone that, you know, doesn't struggle with confidence. Even though I try to make sure I'm gonna let the same time. But dude, there's no doubt Gailen and I would agree, Eric could pump it up because you are an absolute machine and you know that we both believe in you as much as anybody, so. Yeah, and I appreciate that. That's why I love having you guys in my corner. You guys believe in me. You help to continue to encourage me as I move forward in my endeavors and I appreciate and value you guys so much. Thanks, buddy. I love it. You are such a doll. You know, I love that word you just said, encourage her. You know, the more I've gotten to know Cody, that's a word I would use with him. You know, I think that he's an encourager and I like to think I am. I think when you're an encourager, you just, people wanna be around you. And you know, cause you'll have people go, why is everybody around you? Why does everybody wanna go around with you? And I'm like, I don't know. But I think that's it. I think it's, we encourage people. We want people to feel good about themselves and we try to have fun. And you know, I've had Zach and Miles and Josh stand up during my presentation because I do think that's what people, when they look at who can make it in this business, if you were to just see Miles' Facebook profile or Miles just out and about, you would think, is that dude really an insurance agent? Because you know, the average insurance agent used to be 57 years old, which is my age by the way right now. And you know, gray hair and you know, I won't have gray hair, that will not happen. And you know, and just smoke cigarettes or whatever. And now we have these young dynamo professional people that I got to spend an evening with them and they were just such a joy and they're so respectful. And the letter that Zach sat down and wrote to all of us was mind blowing. I mean, I saw that and I was just like, you know, when I first saw Galen's a Pipple, I was like, I don't know that I like that. But then when I got, she has a heart of a Labrador Retriever. I was like, okay, this is getting better. But you know, it was so humbling. I mean, I read that thing and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy is so talented. I mean, that just meant a lot to us. So Zach, if you're watching, I told you dude, the way you get better is to keep coming to stuff like this. And I'm gonna tag you and tag you and tag you till you keep watching all this stuff. But you know, I kept asking Andy, who was the guy I owe the book to? Cause I got it right over here. It's Matt Evangelista. So that's who we've got to get it to. But Matt, I know you're listening. I got your book right here. I've already signed it, autographed it. I just need an address and a place to send it to. But you know, I just think that's so crazy awesome that those three guys are just, and to hear Josh, you know, I didn't get to hear his whole speech cause everything was kind of running late at that moment. But just hearing him in person and the knowledge he shares, Christian Brindle, oh my gosh, another, oh, I love that boy. You know, there's just so many people that have been just, and Justin put on a great show. His team was great, and you know, and I'm excited about this weekend. I mean, Jeff and Matt said it best, Cody, you've got a star stud Atlanta. And what I love about it is Cody listen, you know, cause he calls people back and he says, hey, what did you like about the event? What did you not like about the event? And he's just so thankful whether you like something or you don't like it. So when he asked for your feedback, you guys give it to him because he listens. I saw it on the line up, my man, it was awesome. Thank you. Well, I've not always been the best listener, but I learned really quick in insurance that you want to be a great salesperson selling insurance, you got to listen more than you talk, you know? Yeah, and you guys, two of the best at that, by the way, you know? Thank you. One thing I love that you mentioned a second ago too, that I think a lot of agents that are listening struggle with that, you talked about how important it was for people is their own personal confidence level. Like if someone, like for example, like we were talking about how freaking incredible Eric is, right? You guys listening need to have people around you like Galen and I, like Eric does, right? Or like I do with these two or like Galen does with everyone in the industry, right? Like you have to. And I really believe, like I talked, if I talk about it, I said it at the Medicare conference, like if it's meant to be, it's up to me. Those that are listening, you can 100% be successful in 2021 by listening to people like this and by believe in and applying what they say and believing in yourself. But if you don't believe in yourself, it doesn't matter anything else. If you don't have confidence, you can have the best skill in the world like Eric Vieira. But if you don't have the kind of confidence that you need to succeed, the skill doesn't even matter at that point. Yep. Dr. Norman Vincent Pills says, you have to love yourself like God loves you. Mm, that's so good. And I love that, you know, when I wake up and I'm having a bad day, I had a bad day yesterday and I woke up this morning and I was like, okay, I need to love me like God loves me. And you know, there's some days where we're just not lovable or we don't love ourselves. And I think it's great when he says, love yourself like God loves you. Yeah, that's good. That's so good. I mean, yesterday, people would say, dude, you loved yourself. You did a lot of freaking crazy stuff yesterday. But at the end of the day, I'm looking at all the negative comments and haters and all that as well, right? What did I say? If you don't have a hater, you're not doing something right. That's right, you did say that. You did say that, yep. And we're all gonna get them, you know, like when they start out in the business, you guys are listening, you start out in the business and your family's like, hey, you'll get a real job, you know? You have to listen to you more than you listen to any of the haters, any of the naysayers. And I'm sure Eric's had plenty along the way. Still do, still do. No way. There's no way, Galen, there's no way there's something like this. I'm beating them up one at a time, Cody. I'm just taking them down one at a time. There you go. Hi. You know, usually when somebody hears Mama Galen calling, they're like, oh, Lord, what did I do now? You know, it's the way I used to be when somebody was calling me when I was young. I would be like, oh, crap, what did I do? You know, I do think that's good advice, Cody, because I think one of the things everybody struggles with is confidence. I mean, you know, I went to a seminar and I'm not really trying to be the pastor of the group, but I did go to this thing and it was called confidence. And I was like, that's a good take on the word. I need to know what that means. And so the pastor at the church started speaking on it and it's kind of going back to what Dr. Norman then some hill said, you know, confidence is loving yourself as much as you deserve to be loved. And there's a lot of people that are Taipei personalities or the D and the disc assessment, I think you talked about that, that we look really together on the outside, but there are days on the inside where we don't look the same out here. And so I think what we have to do is we have to be reading constantly. You know, I've thought about that because when I got started in business, that's how I got started. My dad threw me two books like I told you guys last weekend, See If Top, A Zig and Norman Vincent Pills, The Power of Positive Thinking. And I'm now reading this book as I told Cody on the podcast the other day. And this is a good book for you, Eric, and I'm gonna buy it for you. It's called The Tough-Minded Optimist. And this book has been amazing because what I didn't know is I started looking at this line that Dr. Pill wrote in this book and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is about today. Well, this book was copyrighted in 1961. I wasn't born until 63. So it just goes to show you the world's the same and there are ups and downs and that's how the insurance business is. You were gonna have ups and you're gonna have downs but what you've gotta remember is when you're having one of those down days, tell your other half, hey, today I need encouragement. I'll get back on this conversation with you tomorrow but today I need encouragement. And I was trained by a trainer that sold and don't y'all laugh because I know you're going to anyway because I already told you not to. But he sold encyclopedias and he used to tell all of his salespeople that every time, and this is gonna sound kind of sexist but I don't mean it that way, I am a woman so I won't say it. But he goes, mama's every time you grab at your husband you're taking a dollar out of dad's pocket which is your pocket because you manage the money. So every time you complain a dollar is coming out and for all of you watching that goes for men and for women and women and men and men I'm including everybody. But I'm just saying you've got to be that encourager you know that happy wife, happy life. I think that rhymes, I don't know about husband we got to come up with that before this is over we'll come up with that. Maybe happy spouse, happy house, that's what I'll go with. I like that one, that's gonna be my new one. You just saw the magic happen right there. I know, hi, we all came up with it. But you know, I think that's what we've got to remember. We make bigger dollars today but I would just encourage everybody when they're watching all these speakers remember Rome wasn't built in a day and neither were they. Literally, we have got to remember that when you're starting out, you're starting out but if you watch good people and you listen and you observe, you'll get there faster than those before you. But you've got to pay attention and you got to have a great attitude. You know, that's the thing I love about Zig Ziglar. I just told my DTC team this, somebody asked him what do you do for a living? And he says, I love to show people the best cookware. He didn't say I'm a cookware salesperson because that goes a long way, right? But you know, I provide people a service in showing them good cookware and we educate. We're not insurance agents anymore. We educate in the business of insurance. So I would just have a lot of patience and know you're gonna get there. I wanted to, we were talking about books since Galen brought up books. Cody was talking about if it's on, if it's gonna be- I've heard about that, yes. What I love about Jocko Willick with Extreme Ownership is and this was actually given to me by one of my employees because we would talk about what ends up happening many times is if we're not making the sales we wanna make, if we're not enrolling people the way we want to, if we're not hitting our numbers we start to blame outside factors. We blame the leads. We blame our crappy internet connection. We blame the fact that, who knows what? There's a whole myriad of reasons why. But the point of this book and what made the breakthrough for him is that he understood in order to get ahead he has to own every mistake and failure and know that he can learn from those mistakes and then grow from those mistakes and failures. And I think a lot of people it's easy to blame other factors and find an easier out to quit versus saying, you know what? This is a learning moment, it's on me. And now I'm gonna have to take some positive action to keep moving forward. That's what I like about that book. So I recommend, again, if we're recommending books that's a great book because just like Cody was saying if it's gonna be it's on me that's the purpose here, right? Jocko Willick's like, hey, you gotta own it all own the success, own the failures, own it all, extreme ownership and that's where you're gonna end up finding more success. I think that's amazing. One of the things that I think is really good about that is, you know, keeping your head clear of the clutter. You know, you hear that all the time and that's what he's saying is that, you know you've gotta keep this clear and when you fail, own it, be accountable. And when you're succeeding, own that too. Because that's on you as well. And, you know, it's okay to be excited about that. It's okay to say, hey, I did that. And I think so many of us are afraid of appearing raggy but like I told Eric, I think it was, I lost my knots but it was Friday night, I think. But I told Eric, I said, hey dude, you know you need to get this out there more. You know, I told Rebecca Davis about you and man, she has spread the word like wildfire and she loves you and she loves your program. And then I heard Renee say the same thing and you know, they just dick you. And so you get to own that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. And I definitely like, I am a very confident person. It is a little tough for me to brag on myself but I definitely am confident. That's why the program's so good is because I know I'm good. I know that I can build something awesome, make something that produces results which is, that's the name of the game, right? Results, more results. And that's something that I'm very happy to say that we can do for people. And I think that's why I have, you know so many members who are in the program that are out there saying the same thing. Hey man, this is the real deal. You know, this isn't a fly by night. This is the real deal. And yeah, I'm really proud of that. So, but I always thank you like I said because I know that one of the big moves I'm making this year, and this is again, I remember first night at the Guru's conference, Cody had a little mastermind that he held. And I took a picture of the whiteboard he was writing on because he was listing, if these are the next things that you need to level up, right? Because I've been making really good six figures for a long time now, but I'm trying to level up to the seven figure level. And so when I saw his list, I said, man, this is good stuff. A lot of it I've started already implementing but there's other things that I know I need to do better. I need to have someone that's gonna help me on the operation side more because what I'm great at, I'm great at selling my program. You ask anybody who does a demo with me, like they're normally, they're sold. They see everything they're like, where do I sign up, right? I wanna focus more on that. And so I know that I need to have someone else helping me more with the operations side of thing, very much like Cody. And that way I'm freed up to go do more speaking engagements because it's another way that I get to be heard of more is if I go and do more speaking engagements. So I plan on doing more this year. This year's gonna be a big year of change. And, you know, but again, I have great people like yourselves who are always being encouraging, who are always leading the way in what you're doing. And I'm just like, hey, I have enough that if they're willing to have me in their circle, they see something that they feel I can become. And that's what I'm going after. The year of Eric Fierro, 2020, 2021. You're gonna make it, you're gonna make it. I just think it's so inspirational. You know, I was sitting there listening to people speak. And you know, I got to know Pete Fournier just a little bit at 8%, but I got to know him much better this time. And we've become Facebook friends, but he sent me the nicest compliment. He said, man, I'm glad I went before you. I don't know what I would have done if I went after you. And I'm sitting there thinking after he speaks, I'm like, oh my goodness, what am I gonna talk about? I'm not gonna be able to keep this audience engaged. And one of the things I told Eric a while back, I just always want to look out in the audience. And if I see somebody sleeping, then I know I've lost it. You've got to trigger it up. And so I'll say a lot of things that do get reactions, which I think women can say easier than a guy can, at least right now. Well, I cursed a few times on stage. I cursed a few times on stage. I can't wait to watch your deal. I heard it was good. I heard it was good. I heard a blast up there. Well, and you looked good because they showed your video and I was liking it. I was like paparazzi. But I do think sometimes what you've got to do is remember that I've used this new thing and training big agencies because that's what my 2021 is gonna be about. And one of the things I told him that I learned last year is now I sell like a buy. And if you sell like you buy, then you're not pushy, you're not aggressive, but you're closing, but you're literally educating why you would do what you, the way you would buy it. And I've had so many people instant message me this from last week to this week when I was spoken, they were like, I'm trying that and it's working. And I'm like, well, what happened today? And they were telling me their stories, but I think it is a mind thing. If you think that you're just sitting down talking to somebody, like I told my team, give me one business that doesn't have to sell their service, one business. 8% nation has to sell, you have to sell, I have to sell. When you're selling you, it's even harder because when you're selling something, you can brag about that more. Selling you, it's harder to do. And so that's what I told you, Eric. I mean, it's not one of those things where you're gonna go, hey, I'm the greatest, you're not gonna be Muhammad Ali. But what you are gonna do is you are gonna exude confidence. And when you do that, people pick up on that. And they're like, I wanna buy that. Like you held that book up and I'm like, oh, I'm getting that book, because you held it up as what it's doing for you. So I already know you're a success. I know you wouldn't be reading a book that isn't helping you. So you already sold the guy's book because of your ability. People already know your ability. Cody's gonna be able to sell any book he throws up because everybody's gonna go, if Cody's reading it, I'm gonna read it because he's a superstar. I mean, that's what confidence is. 100. You know, I was gonna ask you guys a question because I feel that one of the things that keeps getting brought up to me by agents that they wanna hear more of. And you know, Galen, we actually started going down this path a little bit. And I think we were gonna, we were talking to Cody and Justin about it as well when we were thinking about doing that friend series. Yeah, but I had to lose weight before we put that second one out. But what they wanna hear more about too though, they said, on social media, we always see the roses. We never see the thorns. And people wanna understand more about what it took for us to get to our successes and to kind of be, I guess, I don't know if the word is to be more raw about, hey, man, it's not always like a straight shot up. Even Grant Cardone, I remember he said that once where he's like, success is not like this. Like it's gonna be like this huge bumpy road but you're supposed to continue to incline as you're going along the way. But people wanna hear about those because I think then it makes it more relatable to them. Because they're experiencing it and unbeknownst to them, we are too. We're just not talking about it in public as much. But it is happening. So there's no difference between them and us. We're all experiencing the failures with the wins. What do you guys think about doing stuff like that, making podcasts that actually- I love that. I mean, I'm gonna be doing the accomplished series which you two are just gonna be on it. And I'll get my notepad in a minute and I'll tell you some of the questions because the whole premise behind that is something I talked about, Eric, a while back about. So there's gonna be three questions. Everybody answers this, you know, everybody gets the three same questions. Then there's gonna be a question that I asked that only I know or I found out about that person. And then the last one is gonna be what some of the audience wants to know. And so what I think, the whole premise behind friends or our friends was really about setting up, you know, let's be real. That was really what I wanted to do is let's be real because Cody had asked me a question the very first time I interviewed with him. He goes, tell me about when a career agent leaves. How does that make you feel? And I go, you know, it's gut wrenching. It's like you're losing your child and they're going out on their own and they don't need you anymore. And you don't really know that feeling of a parent till that child leaves. It's not like going to grandmas over not. It's like they're not gonna need me anymore. But you find out that they do, but it's in a different way. But what's happened is when some of these agents have left, you have 50% of the agents that give you credit for everything you did for them. And then the other 50% of the agents, it's all me. I did it my way and you know, and I just hung out there because I liked the coffee, which we all knows a bunch of BS. Well, that's what people need to hear that are starting call centers because they think it's easy. It's not easy. It's one of the absolute hardest jobs for a manager that there is. Thank you, Andy. He got me my info, I'm Matt. But you know, at the end of the day, I think when people hear that, they appreciate it. And they don't make the same pitfalls. You know, like I had a guy, good friend, been in the business a long time. Matter of fact, I got started in the business with his dad. It's been a long time ago. But one of the things that was interesting about it is he said, you know, you lose an agent and you're a lie, he called me. He goes, I don't know why this guy left me. Why did he leave me? He's been with me all these years and I said, I don't know why, but I'm gonna tell you, it's gonna be the best thing that ever happened to you because you're gonna learn all kinds of lessons after he's left, that's what I did at 8% last year, is every lesson's a blessing and every blessing's a lesson. And you know, what you've gotta remember is learn those lessons and apply it to the next person you hire. But also what I've found out is that there's a lot of good people out here that need to stay in career. But they're being recruited by some broker and they're being fed a line of BS or they go out to their Facebook and they go, oh my God, this guy's a super study, he's gonna train me, I'm gonna ride 60 apps a week, it's gonna be a beautiful thing. And then he goes out and he doesn't ride 60 apps in a year. You know, and he's lost the opportunity he had, but what he needs to realize is if he could just tuck the tail and walk back into where he was and said, hey, I made a mistake. So what we do with people with us, if they need that moment to think or they wanna leave, take a month, everything will stay identical in that month. But on the 31st day, you gotta start all over again if you come back, but you're welcome back. And the other thing we do is if they wanna go out on their own, we'll give them an immediate release if they'll just work with our brokerage, because we're gonna give them the best contract they can get out there. And so they just segue over, some find they like it, some find they don't, some find out it's a whole lot harder than what they thought. And it's always good when they call you and tell you that, but we need to get that message out. And that's what I'm gonna be talking about at the next state-percent nation is career versus captive. And I mean, not career versus captive, career versus brokerage, because I don't like the word captive area, you know, you can go back and watch all that footage. But, you know, I do think that that would be a great service to everybody. I think Cody, I think Tom. Well, Cody, because Cody in our last health interview when I was doing that, you actually started going into that, which you don't, I don't hear you talk about it as much, but you did say like, you know, there's times where people have left you and you're like, what the heck? Like, right? So, I mean, you'd be, I guess would you be open? I guess talking more about that on camera. For sure. Yeah, I've, it's not easy for me to do, but I need to do more of it because you're right. Because it's not, because what we do, everyone would be watching and thinking, okay, everything just goes right for them. Nothing ever goes bad, you know? Well, I woke up to like five pictures from people of like people bashing me on the internet, you know? But at the end of the day, right? For me, I'm like, who cares? You know, I'm committed to see if I love you. I'm committed to winning, you know? So, yes, we need to share more of that because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Dude, there's so much power in that, though, because like you said, everyone's gonna have a thing. My big football player came in to say hello to me. This is Mr. Askins and Mr. Fierro. Say hi. Good to meet you, buddy. We still hold a state championship record in Texas. 10 wins, 10 days, not three in a row. But I do, I think there's power in that, Cody, because people need to understand that, you know, what does it take for you mentally to see that kind of crap and then still keep pushing forward? You know, I think that's just gonna be something that really feeds people. There's another thing that was asked about a lot too. I'm just giving you guys content ideas here. But I get asked about a lot as well is just ways to creatively finance things, right? Because everyone does wanna know how to scale, how to grow, but a lot of people may not have the money to do it. They may not have the money to immediately go hire people that can help them with scaling their business. So then they're like, well, do you guys have suggestions on ways that you can creatively finance? You know, what are things that are possible? What are ways to do like, I think people wanna hear more about that. And I told them, I'm like, we gotta make a disclaimer and say, listen, we're not financial advisors. We're just telling you some ideas of what we've seen, but we're not suggesting you do it. You guys, we're just laying it out. But you guys probably know- So, Bob, I'm gonna have to go because I'm already late for a meeting. It was supposed to be at six and I was like, oh, I got plenty of time. I look up at 5.47, I'm like, oh. So thank you, Cody. I love everything you do that you're a rockstar. Thank you for having me, Eric. You know how I feel about you. I love your shirt, by the way, because you are blessed. I love Miss Jessica and your son. So I see you guys live, I mean, on the virtual the next couple of days. So have a great day, y'all. That's right. Bye. Thank you, Gailen, appreciate it. I love Miss Gailen. Make sure that you go follow her. You give her some words of encouragement as she's leaving. She's amazing. And you can see her, along with Eric and myself and other speakers, Les Brown, Brian Tracy, right? Who's gonna be better? We'll see. Brian Tracy or Eric Fierro. We don't know yet, but we're gonna find out. Probably me, but you need to check in to find out. You need to check in to find out. That's right. You know what I loved and I wanted to transition to is you showed, you both of you showed books when you started talking. And so the question for the audience is, how much are you reading? How much are you learning? Like when I interviewed Brian Tracy, he gave his golden triangle of success and he's gonna give it Saturday. And what he talked about is you have to always be committed to learning. Yes. You seem to embody that really well. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's funny. I was just having this conversation yesterday with Josh Lustig about how, because I was telling him, you know, you have already at a young age found a path to success, something that's repeatable, something that you can scale. How do you keep your mind? How do you train yourself to not be, to not basically say, I'm here. I know it all. I'm just gonna keep repeating this, but instead he's open. He wants to still like a sponge absorb everything. And you know, I'm a little bit older than him. And I just, I've always kept myself that same way. I don't think that any of us are ever gonna get to the pinnacle where we know it all. There's always gonna be stuff that we can learn from other people and from reading, which are still other people, right? You're learning from books were written by people. And the best thing you could do for yourself and your business is always stay coachable, always. And I think again, I call you out a few times, you know, because Cody, you embody that. Like you are obviously doing really big things our industry, yet you still pay to be coached by other people because you know, there's more you can learn. And I mean, that's to me, again, you're leading by example and I do the same thing. I invest, I invest at least 30,000 a year. Minimum is what I'm investing in myself in different courses, different books, trainings, whatever it is, right? Getting in the room, as Cody like to say, getting in the room, I always feel that that's gonna return and easily return 10 fold if you do it. I think that's one of the reasons why Josh, he said he spent over $120,000 on himself, but the reason he kept spending more and more money is because he kept seeing it come back even better, right? And I'm sure you're in the same position. That's right, that's exactly right. Once you see something come back, you know, you start to also start to believe in your ability for things to come back, you know, like when I make investments now, I don't worry about them coming back. I know they're gonna come back because I know I'm gonna put in, I'm gonna show up as a learner, make sure I grab information while I'm a part of it, and I'm gonna commit to actually being successful once I grab the information. That's it. And I think that one of the things I like to coach people on because you still see this a lot in the agent community and it's not, it's necessarily their fault. It's just you don't know what you don't know and people don't realize how often they actually have a consumer's mindset versus an investor's mindset. So when they look at the cost of anything to them, it's a payment. It's like, oh, I gotta pay for this too and I gotta pay for this instead of saying, okay, so if I invest in this tool, what kind of return will it get me, right? And that's an investor's mindset and investor's gonna always look at something and say, if I invest in this training, in this tool, in this event, what's my return gonna be? And if it's more than what you put in, it's a win, right? And it doesn't have to be a magic number like, hey, I have to make at least, I need to make back at least 50% more than what I put in. It could be as little as 20%, it's still a gain, right? That's the name of it. That's why investors are rich as hell because they look at things far differently from the traditional person. 90-some% of America has a consumer's mindset to everything. And a lot of people want the investment to come back today or tomorrow and a lot of times it doesn't. Like when I've spent, I've done 8% three times, 18, 19, 20. I've spent probably, let's just call it $1.5 million in three years just on the conference alone, okay? Did that money come back to me yet? Maybe, maybe not. From the conference, definitely not. Everything else, maybe so. But is it gonna come back to me over the next three decades? Absolutely, absolutely. And then the great thing about what you're doing is it's a snowball effect. That's only getting bigger and bigger and you'll end up being hard pressed to find somebody in the insurance industry, at least in our niches where you could say, hey, have you heard of 8% and they're not gonna be able to say no. They're gonna be like, yeah, I've heard of 8%. I've either, I've been there or I've always wanted to go. Those are the things you're gonna end up hearing. But yeah, at the end of the day, it does. It takes that shift in your thinking, which is not always the easiest, but it's necessary shifting from the consumer's mindset to the investor's mindset. That's right. Well, it also shows that you're a long-term thinker instead of a short-term thinker. Yes, and that's one of the things I always tell people, like if you wanna get into the Medicare niche, I love when the final expense guys, they always tell me they're like, yeah, man, I'm in final expense because that's that sexy money. That's that money that comes to you right away, right? And he's like, but I understand the Medicare game because that's that long-term money. And I'm like, yeah, man, I've always told people that if you're gonna get into the Medicare game, be okay with not seeing that money for a couple of years. You're gonna work your tail off, you're gonna build it up, but I promise you, you're gonna look back three, four years from now and you're gonna be like, damn, I'm glad I put in that work. And the cool thing is you can still be getting that sexy money at the same time. It doesn't mean you have to stop, you know? So, but the point is you should at least start to dabble in the industries where the residual income is coming in, which is now, which is the Medicare niche and the health insurance niche. That's another, to me, that's one of the next big booming job economies that we see coming up is the health insurance economy because more and more big producers are getting in there, like your Rebecca Davis, like, you know, Brad Hannon, who's also killing it in the game. And now you're also showing people how to get in it. That's right. All right, you and I played one-on-one, who wins? You would probably be able to drive on me pretty easily over and over again, but I maybe, maybe be able to out-shoot you. What if we were going to 10 and I gave you nine points? Oh, then I'd win. How much money you got on that? I'd win. I'd easily put a hundred bucks on that. For about a thousand. Come on, you're telling me that I only got to make one shot to win? I can do that. You wanna see my confidence? I'm telling you, okay, I'll put a thousand on it. I can do that. Boom, who wants to see- You ain't gonna get 10 hoops on me from in the time that I have to get one, no way. Hey, Nate, give me a thumbs up when you're ready to come up, by the way, because I played Nate's son at his house and I made a bet that I would give his son, Alex, a hundred bucks for every point he scored. Okay. Eight or nine-oh, his son scored and I had to give his son a hundred dollars. Nate, do you remember that story? I do. So yeah, this is a little bit strange here. So I busted my back, so I have a stand-up desk I'm actually trying to put together today and it wobbles, so I can't put the external camera on top of the computer at the moment or else you'd be seeing like this the whole time. So I have a makeshift duct tape. So it's like way high up there. I'm trying to figure out how to get it to work. So anyway- It is a- Oh, look at that. Tilling it. Boom. It's up so high. I'm looking down here at you guys and I'm looking down. Well, we've got a bunch of people on that are like, dude, how do I make seven figures like Nate offer? Well, obviously you realize, oh, you're a bunch of people watching, right? We probably realized pretty quickly you don't get smart to do it. So that's encouraging, you know? That should give a lot of people some encouragement to go, hey, this guy who doesn't know how to hook up a webcam the right way without having to jiggle around can do it. It's looking high. Yeah, what's up, Eric, how are you, buddy? It's good to be here. How are you? Well, having a Galen shirt I was coming on, she's left. I wonder if someone tell Salt talk really nice about me like that, my goodness. Oh, you're watching, you're watching, huh? I've been watching, I've been having in the background pretty much all day on your marathon, 8%. You'll be tired by tomorrow. How do you even pull it off? I don't know, well, my team's got me soup and like six different teas today and some throat drops because there's a good chance I lose my voice this weekend. There you go. So you got a standing mat, you were saying, right? You got to shoot me, you got to shoot me which one's the best. I'm sure you tried them all. Yeah, this one's pretty good. And you always use the best. Make sure you text me that later on, during one of your breaks. Yes, I'm sure I will. I got my list of what I need for my stand-up desk. I didn't buy it, so I couldn't tell where we bought it, but Kelly did, so. All right, well, let's ask Kelly. I'm sure you guys are getting a lot of good stuff right now, right? Yes. Drop in the comments where the standing mat you can order on Amazon is, too. I'm going to send the link to Merwin. He needs to be on this, too. He's hanging out with me. Cody, was that the new office? I haven't seen that set up. Yeah, dude, how about that? Now, that's a real size, a boom. A real size basketball hoop, right? I know Landon, someone's going to come in there with a real basketball and start destroying that office. And they don't, I'm going to. Just don't hang on it, OK? Does that break away, Ren? Well, it is. In the drywall? Uh-oh. That's a soft dunk. Well, you can land right on that couch. It's going to break your fall. It'd be great. That's true. I don't know if it would hold. I mean, it would probably hold 178 pounds, but I don't know. Oh, we got Mitchell watching all the way from Trinidad and Tobago. Whoa. Oh, we had Canada on earlier. Alex, what's good, bro? So he said, give me one second. I got to do something on an email real quick. So just forgive me if I'm looking all over the weird places. So Eric, yeah, if they haven't registered, give the people what they want, bro. How do they make sure that they register and show up for this thing to next two days? And why are you going to dominate Nate from a speaker standpoint? Oh, well, I just think that, you know, Nate, he's just he's so humble. He's so humble. So I'm just going to come with the confidence. And I'm just going to have to, you know, bring that fire because he's just he's too quiet. He's too quiet. You know, Nate, he's just he's too quiet. So that's not going to serve you well, buddy. It's not going to serve you well. Yeah. But you can go check out. It's www. If you haven't registered, www.8%virtual.com. I'm going to be short and sweet. Try to get some impact on Saturday. So it's really expensive to to register. Yes, it's true. It is true. It's free right now, but in eight seconds, it's it's going to be $8. And so many tabs open. I was done doing what I had to do, and I couldn't I couldn't figure out ever to stream you are really. So I couldn't bear to go back and try to find you guys. I've just been clicking on every tab, like out of the 52 tabs that are open. So what's that? You need an IT guy. Yeah, there you go. It starts nine pre pre show starts nine AM central will kick off just before 10 central Eastern 10 and 11. Are we are we are we allowed to say what days we're we're speaking on? Or is that that's a good word. Yeah, so I speak I speak tomorrow. Moro at do I see the time. 12 o'clock, man, beyond 1210. I had I already had it locked and loaded, dude. You're one of my favorite ones. I make sure I wasn't scheduling during that time. I love this guy. Look at him. He's making blush over here. He says, dude, I want to be a percent producer. Let's make it happen, boys. Dude, that's what's all about. It's too easy. OK, there's Alex. Hey, Alex, tell everyone. Tell only probably a thousand people watching on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and every other social media site that with his thousand followers. So Tom, you took 100 bucks from my son, Alex. Hey, you took 100 bucks from Cody. That's true. So on a 1v1, like every time I scored, I got $100. Yeah, you got one point. I mean, Cody was playing him like he was in the NBA. My gosh, Cody, I was like, Cody, dude, the kid's 14 years old, man. He's goes and slammed like about slammed it three times on him. He's body checking him. He plays like he's 19. That's not my fault. There you go. There you go. Cody, you're one of those guys that plays real aggressive, though, don't you, like in the court playing like you're probably you probably are playing like in the NBA. You're you're getting heavy with the body checks and knocking them around. Alex, do I play aggressive? Yeah. You don't shoot that much, but you only drive. That's why I beat you there, Cody. See, you give me nine points. I'm going to win because you don't want to throw a 14-year-old kid on here, right? Go to the bucket. Go to the bucket. Mitchell Lee wants to be an 8% producer. That's right. Hey, Rebecca, give me a thumbs up when you're ready to come up. All right? OK, she's ready. All right. Rebecca Davis, Medicare Water Woman. Look at this crowd. Hey, guys. Hey. How are y'all? We are great. We are great. You look like you're having way too much fun in here. We are. We're hanging out. We're talking about how you are going to absolutely crush it because I speak for the whole weekend. That's all we do. You're in for a good cry. Then watch me. You're a good what? Did she say? A good cry. That's awesome. Are you going to tell us some sad stories, Rebecca? Oh, you know. It was like therapy when Cody gave me my topic. I'm like, I'm texting him in the middle of this. I'm like, this is therapy. That's right. That's right. It is. I mean, it's the topic that everyone needs to hear, though. And Rebecca Davis is on right before Eric, I think, if I remember correctly. Good. Are they going to have us do a virtual high five like a group of cross screens? Yeah, Rebecca gets on, what, 12, like 11, like 10 minutes before 12, then Eric follows up. I memorized the schedule for you, Cody, just in case. I got to pick my favorite people out to make sure I'm, you know, other things that are going on a little bit. So it does give me a high five. Can you, can you do up to you? Go to your corner. There we go. I don't know what stream yard are we all in the same spot. We're going to high five, Cody. Yeah, we're good. We're doing good. There we go. Cody's going there. All right now, if we can chest bump, that'll be really hilarious. OK, ready, Cody? You're crazy. I don't think you want us on here. No one's going to get on your virtual conference here. I don't know what happened next time. What happened in the interest industry when you guys, when all you guys watch it on YouTube, basically you start making large amounts of money. OK, what happens? You start acting silly. You start having more money to know what to do with. And before you know it, you're like Eric, Rebecca, and Nate. And he's going to spit out his water. What's that? Cody breaking computer. Or maybe like Cody breaking computers. That's right. Hey, how was that ad yesterday? It was funny. Hilarious. Did you see that? What ad? Oh my gosh. Oh, it is. You didn't go watch that. Yeah, that was hilarious. That was hilarious. That was in your face right there. I love that. I almost went in through my TV just so I could try to feel what that felt like. It must have been amazing. I did. It wasn't that cool. I was like, Cody's doing what I'm doing. And then I realized it's broken, you know, pretty expensive TV, but it's all right. I have a printer. You could have done that with two days ago. And then miraculously in the middle of yesterday, it just starts printing out all these documents from two days ago. Six hours later, my husband, who does my IT, could not figure out what was wrong with it. And so he gives up. And then like the next day, like at two in the afternoon, it just starts printing. Wow. That's funny. I got a lot of haters for that video, by the way. What did they say? I didn't even want to see the comments. You want to hear them? Yeah, I can't believe we broke that monitor. I could have used it. Probably. Let's see what we got. I got so many flipping notifications right now. Was it a working monitor or was it a busted one anyways? I mean, to restore your say, Cody, if you're not making waves, your boat ain't moving. That's right. I like that. And he said, the bigger the boat you had, the bigger waves you get, and all those little people sitting there tied to the dock are going to yell and scream and moan and complain because their boat's doing this for you to flip over, and you're out there and you're, yeah. It's just, you know. Of course, he had a $20 million yacht, too. So he was able to use that analogy since they were all pretty much freaking out when he didn't go the speed. What does that cost? I'm not a boater, but you're supposed to be in the coast zone. I didn't hear any of your comments. The wake zone. Yeah, what happened? Well, I got a- No wake zone. There you go. No wake zone. I'll get to them. I'll pull them up. I'll get to them. I'll find them. So though you guys join them more, I promise you're going to get this. It'll be completely different than what you're going to get right now. So when it comes on, they're like, oh, that was a waste of my most wasted 10 minutes of my life right here. Also, if you show up tomorrow and you hate it, Nate's going to give you all of your money back. 100%. Yeah, exactly. You get 100% refund. Yup. 100% refund on your money. And I'll pay whatever bandwidth you use for the month and just to prorate it out for the 30 days. So we should do it. Give free bandwidth back for, you know, someone who doesn't like the conference. Boom. We can do that. Hey, you guys should see what a client brought me the other day since I'm in this office. Hold on. See it. We'll see it. I'm actually, that's really cool. You're all ready for this? Oh, you might want to give a pre-etch. See, now people are really going to be like, what in the world is that? You might want to give a little backstory to it. That's so cool. I'm getting a whole collection. People keep bringing me all this stuff. That's the latest one, though. I need to be a superhero of some kind. Yup. Yes, you do. You are, though. What's a, I guess, let's think of a, maybe a Hispanic superhero name, you know? I guess my wife, she'll know. Nacho Libre. Nacho Libre, yes. He was a famous wrestler, right? Jack Black made a movie, but Nacho Libre, it was hilarious. So that's real? Jack Black did it, it's real? Cody reminds me of The Flash. He totally reminds me of Barry Allen and The Flash. I like that, I could do that, totally. That's good. I'm not even asking what I remind you of, I don't even want to hear it. Hell, you know, definitely not Superman. My kid is wearing my shirt off, I'd be all right, get passed for it, baby. Suck in the gut a little bit. All right, so, we dropped the three of you off. In Montana, okay? Call from Jeff. Is that, oh, is that your office phone? I'm not ringing, it's like an hour after hours and I've taken like eight calls. That's how you know. Rebecca is super successful, her office phone never shuts up. It is. So, okay, so we dropped all three of you off in Montana. No leads, and you have to make 10, let's call it $20,000 in seven days. Seven days. What do you do? I call you first. That's a good idea. We're in Montana, exactly. Yeah. Reach out to that old Facebook in front of the geyser like in a town. I would probably start dancing for money. I'd make that money quick. Well, I mean selling insurance. I would sell insurance, but I'm not sure what these guys are doing. I would probably go sell insurance. How? That's not as fun. What's the first step you would take? Do I have any money? I mean, you're not giving me enough parameters here. Do I still have a credit card? Do I still have money? Am I like stuck with a hundred bucks in a car and a cell phone with no contacts? Is that where we're going with this? Like the undercover billionaire? Yes, you get no money. No money, huh? It will feed you. We'll give you a car. We'll give you a place to stay, but you don't get any money for marketing. Oh, we get a car? Yeah. And no money for marketing. Do I have any? What do I have in my suitcase? Do I have any? Oh my goodness, here we go. Do I have a tablecloth? Do I have books? What do I got? Whatever you need. There's not marketing money. Okay. No marketing money. Oh. What do you do? Those that are watching, that they may be in this position right now and they may be thinking, what should I do? So now's the chance for three legends to help other future legends. My first couple of days I just spent time, I'd be going wherever people were at. I'd be asking about themselves, what do you do for a living? What do you do for work? What about this? Making friends and they always turn around and they ask you, so what do you do? It's funny, you should ask, right? So I'd be going to what I'm familiar with, really, it's like, I never sold door to door, so I'm not gonna run around and sell on door to door and try to figure it out in a week if I have 20 grand to make. I'm gonna go out there and find out, okay, what do I know how to do? I know how to put on events, where I can bring people in for a free event and talk about a product or service. I know how to network with people. I know how to get to someone's warm market by asking who they may know by making them feel less offensive, right? So if I was out and I would network and make friends, then in the casual conversation, depending upon what you do and we have several different products, I was like, what do you do? Well, I help protect people's biggest asset. Well, what is that? Their ability to work. What do you mean? Well, if you lose your job, most people are nine days away from their paycheck. So heart attack, stroke, cancer, so we're involved in that business. We also help people get out of debt nine years or less, including their mortgage, without spending any additional money that they're currently spending. So I mean, Cody, do you happen to know anybody? I'm here and new in town. I'm getting my business rolling. I got a sales number, I got a hit. Could you help me out? Do you happen to know anyone that may be interested in one of those two things? And you know what 70% of people say? I'm interested. Because you know, I did it. I didn't come at them. I didn't go out there to try to sell them. I went around them and took it away from them and created their interests. And then their mind went, whoa, I think I would be interested in at least hearing about that. And then once I got that sale, who do you know? Who do you know? That's exactly what I would do if you dropped me off in middle Montana. That's good. Jack and Bruce, depending if it's cold out. Now, let's rate Nate, okay, you guys on Facebook and Nate on YouTube, one to 10 in the comments, one, it was horrible, 10, if it was actually really good and creative, okay? Now, let's see if you hear all of them first. What if they give me a 10 and then no one else can win? Or make it a one, it means I'm gonna have to lose no matter what? You never know, right? Help me out, I spoke on YouTube while we're waiting on those to come in because there is a little delay that I think Jared was about to jump in. Yeah, well, being that we have time against us, first thing I'd wanna do is make as big a splash as I can. So I'd wanna probably go hit up the nearest mobile home parks and try to set up a community event where I can do a presentation in front of many people in one shot. It's actually what we did when we first, when I first started getting into the Medicare world is we went and hit up mobile home parks, lots of seniors there. So we can get there, talk to the event coordinator, set up something pretty quick, have at least 20, 30 people come in. Now I'm in a place where I can show that I'm a position of authority because obviously if I'm being dropped with nothing but I have this, I'm gonna show them that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to Medicare. So I started doing my presentation right as many as I can, have that position of authority now. I'm gonna do exactly what Nate said. After I'm writing up business, I'm gonna be saying, is there anyone else that you think I can help with the same exact situation? And all of them are gonna have somebody to talk to. So that's how I, with the short amount of time you've given us, seven days, that's probably how I would hit it. Okay, that's good. That's good. We got a lot of feedback on Nate's. What do you guys think on Mr. Erick's now? Okay, one to 10, the creativity and the thing is all three of these, all three of these individuals could do 20 Gs in seven days with zero leads or anything else. And you guys watching are like, dude, this is nuts. There's no way. I'm telling you, all three of these individuals would freaking crush it. Okay, so let's get, let's get Eric some scores. Okay, we got a bunch of 10s and 9.25s. 9.25s. You'll get the guy from like American Idol. 9.25? We got a couple of 10s for Eric so far. Technical. Oh, okay. There another one. Now let's see what Mr. Rebecca would do. Well, first of all, I'd spend my day figuring out the lay of the land and hitting up all the local mom and pop businesses and getting donations for a local block party. And we will host it, maybe a food drive, bring in some senior meals on wheels, people, bring your dog, get some dog food people in there. And I get all these people gathered up to give me all the things I need for the party for donations. And then since Facebook is our friend, I would blast an entire 90 mile radius of wherever I've landed for a free block party. Bring your grandma, bring your dog, bring your brothers and sisters, whoever you want to bring, there's gonna be giveaways, we're gonna have food, it's gonna be just a great fun social hour, meet your neighbor kind of thing. And in the middle of it all, of course, I'll stand up and give my like five minute little elevator speech of who I am and what I do and how I can help them. And then I'll just go around and mingle and set appointments for the rest of the week. There you go. Boom, that's good. I like it, Rebecca. What do you guys think? And on Facebook and YouTube for Ms. Rebecca, okay? We had, Eric got some high scores as well, all right? While we're waiting on feedback for Ms. Rebecca, okay? I am thinking about what, while you guys were talking, I'm thinking, okay, what would I do? I think I would need, I would probably need four days. I would knock 150 doors a day. I would make six cells a day, one for every 25 doors. And I would put up about 20 to 25K in life commissions in four or five days and not even take the whole set. And then I would go to the, oh, he's got a one up, either, no, Mr. One Upper. I was dumb day two. I didn't know that was part of the deal. Me and Eric saw Medicare. It takes more than one app to hit 20 grand, guys. That's right. But our money will last longer. The money will last longer. That's right. But we'll have 20 grand the following 10 years where they'll be on day three going, oh, shit, I blew that. I gotta do it again. I love that. We should have- That's such good stamina, man, because he has that kind of mentality. He's gonna go doorknock 150 doors a day, man. He's obviously never been to Montana. There isn't 150 doors in a single town in Montana. He's gonna wear himself out. He thinks we're gonna do it in four days when he's walking three miles every door and one door to the next to the next. He ain't gonna be doing it in three days. He's been here for like three months. How many doorknocks do you have to know? I got like 12 done the day, dude. How many miles a day? So now everybody's planned, now that we poked holes all through it, Ray Cody's plan, what did you say? Yeah, help me out, guys. Come on, come on. Somebody give him a 2.25. So you are gonna add this up, right? Because Eric's over there, he's texting me to death, going, I'm gonna beat you. I'm better than you. Don't all of it. I mean, like just scroll down all this text. I just like to have, no, I'm kidding. He would never do that. It was awesome. So I think everyone gets a 10. I got a 8.7, man. Come on. That was called, that was called influence, outsider influence, other people's opinions there. Then I got, then I got Cody's plan over 9,000. What's that 9,000? On a scale of one to 10, I get a 9,000, okay? That brings my average up for sure. Nice. 9,000. So, here's what's funny, I just learned a lot. Like even though that was a funny, silly thing, I just learned a lot. Like I just like, whoa, like I'm not in those industries. And it's like, I think it's one of the things I scratch my head when people, I always watch the successful people who still plugged in. And I always said, that's what I'm gonna be. I wanna be, I hate that I'm successful. It's not a destination. It's a journey. You're never as successful as you wanna be. So I'm not saying I'm successful. Am I financially free? Yes. Do I have the money game out of the way? Yes. Does that make me a success? I don't think so. It just makes me realize that I have one thing that usually is a primary foundation of most every other problem, spiritual, mental, physical, social. It takes a lot of better money to buy better food. Eating it, shopping a whole foods is three times expensive than going to a Walmart, right? A good social life requires money, physical life. So, I always watch those people that, there's tights people that they get the money game out of the way and then they think that they've arrived and they stop plugging the stuff like this, right? And then I watch people get the money game out of the way like you all have already who were, financial freedom's not a million dollars in the bank and driving a Lamborghini. Financial freedom, if you look at the definitions, having enough money in the bank, passive income coming in to cover your basic necessities if you don't have to go to work. I think Robert Kiyosaki was financially free when he had three rental properties, right? Getting out of bed, making 5,000 a month and your income or your expenses are three. You're financially free. Now, so unless you overspend and go buy stuff you can't afford, now you have time to really focus on, you have that foundation where you can really focus on everything that's really important in life. Cause money's not important unless you don't have it, then it's all encompassing. That's why I love people who go money's not everything. Yeah, well, if you don't have it, it's pretty close to the same as air. Every decision we make, unfortunately, in today's society is based upon the amount of money you have or you don't have or based upon the amount of time that you have or don't have. And see, money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy time. Yeah, yeah, man, you hit it right on the head. Yeah, and I disagree. Money does buy happiness. Money doesn't buy fulfillment, right? I love that one too. Money doesn't buy happiness. Yeah, I've never seen anyone can jump on a jet ski racing around the lake and come back. That was the most miserable thing I've ever done in the world. Who screwed that? Well, they go to vacation, right? And they're in a five-star hotel with a butler and they're like, I'm miserable, right? Our little kids run downstairs and they open all their Christmas presents because that was the worst Christmas ever. So like money buys happiness, man. It does, it just doesn't buy fulfillment, you know? So I scratch my head because I see, you know, the people, I understand why the people maybe that made it think that they made it and that's good. But then I see people who like were me for many, many years, who don't plug into this stuff and they don't have the success that they want. It's like, I'm, you know, Cody said, jump on, I have other stuff to do. My wife just got home. My son just got home. And everybody else was like, you know what? Great, pull me on. How do I get on? What's to give me two minutes? I'll jump on. Because I want to be around here. And I was watching, you know, I was watching in the background pretty much all day as long as he's been on here and had the sound on why I'm answering emails. And if I had to take a phone call, I'd put it on mute because I mean, I learned stuff from you, Eric. I learned stuff from Galen. I mean, that was awesome. And the other guests he had on stuff. So, you know, it's such a cliche where 99% of success is showing up, but it's so true. It's so true because by showing up, by accident, pure accident, the stuff that you're gonna need to have success in your life and your business and your relationships is gonna start rubbing off on you. Because what you notice as you watch Galen and what you watch Eric, you notice a bunch of confident people who aren't high on themselves, who realize they didn't get there by themselves, that they had a bunch of other people that spoke into their life or they have agencies or customers that got them the success that they want. And that's how you can always tell a difference between someone who made it themselves versus someone who was given the money or didn't make it. Because all of the people like you that are watching, you're gonna have to, like John Maxwell says, right? Grow through life instead of go through life. I would go through life my whole entire life until I met my mentor, wake up kid. You can't keep doing what Irish people do. Or you're gonna live a blow to an average life. You gotta do what wealthy people do. How do I know that? Start hanging around them. If you start hanging around people, you'll know, hey, look, that guy makes the most money. He stays late. Hey, that guy makes the most money. They listen more than they talk. Hey, that guy makes them or Gal makes the most money. They go above and beyond what they're called duty and what they're supposed to be doing. And like you start learning it in behavior. It's like an animal, right? You start watching, you know? And you start to see, okay, now it's not something you're gonna read in a book. I'm telling you. You know, I have all sorts of people that I know that are, you know, PMA-er, you know, go to this seminar and that seminar or weekend meeting there and they go to their entrepreneur class on Saturday and they're still broke. They can recite the whole book. They can grow rich, pride forward and backwards and they don't make any money. They're broke because they didn't take the time to do the personal growth necessary. And that's the one thing that was hard for me to learn. You say you'll never make more money. Well, less accidentally, but in this business in the insurance industry, I know what we do, you're never gonna, your income will never exceed your growth. I think you guys would agree with that, you know? So, I mean, guys, get on, man. If you're not, you gotta get on Friday, Saturday, push some stuff aside. It's a couple of things, appointments you can't move around and I'm not telling you it's because I'm talking for whatever 10 minutes or so. I'm telling you because I wanna be on. I wanna learn. I wanna grow. I wanna become better because everybody is gonna be on that call. Everyone's on that panel. Cody Askins has things about him and it's his character that I envy, right? And his looks, he's good looking too, man. His body. I hate that he's so delusional. He was not very, I take a shirt off of my house to go swim in the pool. I made my wife stay in the room and like, chucked her, he was like, I can't see Cody with a shirt off. Looks like Kirk is, right? You know, Eric, you have things that I, that I envy is probably the word admire and would like to incorporate in my life. Rebecca, you do as well. You know, I love your Wonder Woman stuff. So I mean, that's something I envy too, right? But everyone of those people has things where I can pull and I'll end with this, pull from, right? I made the big mistake when I started building a sales organization thinking that since I had success and I arrived that I could be everyone's answer, right? I could be your, I'll coach you. I'll mentor you. I'll train you. I'll be your answer. Then I quickly realized that I can't be everyone's answer. I can be made offer and be that small piece of the puzzle in your life to help you get you where you want to go. But you're going to need way many more pieces than you're going to get from Nate Offer. I may have that thing that helps you do this, but Eric's going to have a thing that helps you do that. Cody's going to have a thing that helps you do this. And Rebecca's going to be like, and so on and so forth. And when I was willing to give that control up and realize I can't be everything to everybody, I got really good at promoting events like this to my team and my organization and the people that are working for me because I allow them to get what they needed from who they needed to get it from. Some people can relate to me. Some people hate me. I get it. Sometimes I'm too much. Some people are going, man, your energy is so contagious. Or if you were like, your energy is so annoying, right? So they used to bug me, used to bother me. It doesn't bother me anymore. I know I'm the right guy for the right people to help them get to the thing that they need from me to have success. But you got to be willing and open to surround yourself with successful people as much as you can, as soon as you can, all the time. So that's all I've got to say about that. I approved it. This is so true, though. This is so true, Nate. I mean, no matter how good anyone's speaker is, they can't do it for the person across the table. All they can do is turn a light bulb on and make you think differently. But until you think differently in your own self and build an action plan around that, you're just always going to be sitting in the room and nothing's ever going to come of it. It's so true. Yeah, I think that, I tell people that all the time that I get asked a lot. I got asked a lot for this event. Is it worth my time? Absolutely. Will every person that's speaking speak to you directly? Probably not, but I bet you several will. And the pieces that you get from those several people can change your life if you put it into practice because it's one thing to listen to all this stuff, but without the action, it means nothing. So you hit it on the head, Rebecca, action. You need to take action. It's activity, right? Activity, activity, activity must be taken in order to see results. So we have a great culmination now of speakers and industry leaders who are willing to more openly, more now than ever, to share information. I've been in this industry 15 years. I can tell you I've seen how cutthroaty could be. I saw how much people would hold things to the chest. Never in the history of my career has it been as open with giving knowledge and information and blueprints of how to be successful, but it means squat if you don't actually take action. I love that. Is it worth my time? I don't know how much your time worth because the people that are gonna be on there are some people that are making $100 a minute. Yeah. That'll be speaking. I don't know, Brian treats those guys. They probably, they're less proud. If you add it up, they're calculating their income divided by 52 weeks by seven days by 24 hours and by minutes. There's, I wouldn't, do you want to know my calculator? I wouldn't highly doubt there's people that'll be speaking that are making $1,000 to $2,000 a minute. So I don't know, is it worth your time? Because they're making 20,000 more a minute than you are and they're taking their time to do it and they're gonna be on it. So, you know, that's what I would say. All right, Cody, Rebecca, I gotta go. I gotta roll. I gotta get things moving. Thank you so much for sending me a text and having me jump on here. So hopefully I had some type of impact in someone's life watching this or at least you laughed at me. That's an impact. You know, laughing is good. It's good for you. I love you. I love you, bro. I love you. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you, Cody Askins. Thank you, buddy. Okay, see you tomorrow. Boom, boom. Thanks, homie. Also, we just had, as he's turning his camera off, so I'll remove him. Someone's T on YouTube said, do watching these count is trying to survive with successful people. It's part of the equation, but it's not the whole equation. Would you guys agree? Repeat it again. What did you say? It's on the, I don't know if you guys can see the chat too, but T on YouTube said, do watching these count as surround myself with successful people like this, right? I believe it's part of the equation. It's a step in the right direction, but it's not all of it. I think it'll encourage people more to wanna actually be at the live event. There's an energy that's hard to explain when you get around these people in person. It really is, it's an energy that when you are hearing these ideas and you're spending the time and moreover, you're actually seeing that when I'm hanging out with Cody, Cody to a lot of people might be like this big persona, like, oh my God, he's Cody Askins. But when you spend time talking to him, you're like, he's Cody, he's just, he's Cody. And if a guy like Cody is out here doing these big things, what's stopping you? So I think that energy is really infectious. This is a good start to one and it gets you to the in-person to see that it is worth being there and being around those people. I agree. I mean, there's a big difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional. And the virtual is basically two-dimensional. You're flat. If you connect with somebody on a screen, think of how much you're gonna connect with that person in real life. I mean, it's such a game changer to meet somebody in real life. So if you have any connection with any of the speakers on the next two days, can you imagine the connection you're gonna have with that person in real life? You know, having a cup of coffee with them or just asking them a question when they get off stage? It's a game changer. This is a great way to meet people, kind of learn what they're about, who they are. You might take notes and be like, you know what? I'd really like to pick this person's brain or that person's brain. This is a two-dimensional screen. And we're just getting to know each other because we can't answer questions. We can't feel conversations. But you can do that when you go in person in July. And you're gonna have your favorites. And then some of the people that you may not have connected with on the flat screen, when you see them on stage, they may blow your mind on stage. And you're like, oh my gosh, that is so not the same person I saw on a screen. Now they're your favorite person. I mean, you just really never know. And until you get in the room truly, it's not the same. This is great. And be on it. You're gonna learn so much. I have my favorites. I know everybody else has theirs. But there's several people on the screen that I've never heard speak at all. I'm really curious about them and what they're gonna say. And I can't wait already. Can't wait to meet them in July when they're gonna be live firsthand and in person, three-dimensional. Right. I love that. Also, we just had someone on. Thank you for sharing that, by the way. We should have someone share on YouTube. July question mark, if I make enough money by then, so I send back, not if. When? Come on. Absolutely. Hey, I was just gonna say to plug into what Nate was saying too, it's important that I know people are busy and I know that you have your own lives and you got things going on. But even myself, I had an appointment an hour ago and I messaged Cody. I'm like, hey, I could be on for like 20 minutes and here I am an hour later because it's just, it's important to me, right? I get on here, I start having these conversations and so I'm on my phone as someone else was talking. I just, I'm sitting here moving my appointments because it's just, it's important. Make the time, you know? Because whether you believe it or not right now, it is important. The things that you're gonna hear over the next couple of days, there's gonna be a lot of great wisdom that's being shared. And they always say what's the difference between a wise man and a smart man? A wise man learns from others' mistakes. Smart man makes the mistakes himself, right? So there's nothing wrong with being wise. Learn from other people who are on here who've gone through the mud and maybe you could skip having to go through the same mistakes, you know? There's just gonna be so much stuff you're gonna be given away. That's right. Another question, if you could go back to the beginning of your career, what changes would you apply ASAP? I would have faced my fears faster. You'll see that when you hear my talk, I talk about that. I go more in depth about fear. It's something that crippled me in my first year of my career. And if I could do it all over again, I would have crushed you that damn thing way faster and probably been at a different place than where I'm at right now. But it's all a learning, like I said, that because of that and going through it, I've been able to share that with a lot of agents who've been suffering through the same thing and I've helped them through it. So it's still, I'm glad I went through it because I've been able to help people as a result. Yeah. Mine is almost controversial because I initially got my start in a captive state farm organization. And I could easily go back and say, if I knew what I know now, then I'd be independent from the get-go. But the thing is being captive to start, I had the training and the people right there at my becking call all the time to ask questions to train with. And it really gave me a foundation. Especially with state farm for all insurance products. So moving into the independent world, I felt in some ways I had to leg up. I was partially held back in a kind of a hamster wheel job because I wasn't the agency owner. I was just an agent. But at the same time, it prepared me to know what I had to do as an independent agent going forward. So if I took it from my independent career on, I think the thing I would change most is I would connect with people and invest in myself sooner. I didn't start investing in myself and thinking of what I could do besides just selling a policy to the person in the office, but thinking bigger and investing in myself and people and honestly being more well-read. That's probably what I would start sooner if you take out my first four years. Because to me, that is almost contradictory because I don't think I would be as good as I am today without that solid training, even though I would have loved to have started then with what I know now. You know, but I think what I love about what you're saying is that too often we see captive agents are taking the captive route at first kind of get demonized. And I think that the reality is not everybody is ready to become an independent agent and to be on their own right off the bat. It is difficult, right? You need to have an iron stomach to deal with some of the stuff. And a lot of times going the LOA route or the captive route is a great foundation and you hit it on the head. Look at you, you're here, you're successful and you went that route and you're saying you wouldn't change that. I mean, to be quite honest, my best year as a captive agent, I made like $27,000. Now I had a really crappy pay schedule on top of it. But then I was able to bring in six figures in the first 45 days, I went as independent. I timed it right, I jumped on right when open enrollment was happening. And I knew what I had to do and I already had some relationships built because of that. So in that first open enrollment period, I was able to hit six figures in premium and sales income as income commissions, but it took me four years making $25,000 to $27,000 a year to be able to do that. Yep, I love that. And I think that needs to be talked about more that it's easy to sell a dream to somebody, but if you're not selling the work ethic necessary to be able to accomplish it, then you're just setting somebody up for failure. So I think that especially in today's age, there are a lot of great L.O.A. shops out there who are gonna help you to get a great start in this career and that'll let you go independent once you're ready. So I think, and I think you can probably make more than 27,000 nowadays with those L.O.A. shops. So yeah, there's a lot of great opportunities out there. Like I said, there's a lot of creative ways to be successful on your route to going independent. PNC is a hard way to get there. They only give you like one to 4% commission and you have to write like 50 autos and 100 homes every month just to get that. So. Wow, wow. Guys, if anybody's listening and you're in the PNC world and struggling, yeah, look at health. Why I'm blowing the money different. Health, Medicare, life, anything with the other license. Well, Cody, Rebecca, I got a bounce man. Like I said, I got to get to my other appointment. I do apply. I pushed it because you're so important, Cody, that I wanted to make sure I was here for you. Bye, Eric. Your audio went out. Your audio went out. But I get what you're saying. You're saying bye. I'm muted. I'm muted. I was gonna say, I'll leave. You just keep going and I'll see you tomorrow. But I'm kidding. But we'll see you guys tomorrow. Take care. Thanks, Eric. See you, sir. Yeah. Appreciate you, bro. Mr. Rebecca, it's you and me now. Oh my goodness. I get you two days in a row. How fun is this? Oh, I know. How much longer are you going with this tonight? Okay, sounds good, buddy. My dad's hanging out. He's normally the last one to leave, but I may get him tonight. Get him on here. Tell him I want to talk to him. Dave, Rebecca wants to talk to you. How are you doing? Hey, Ryan! How are you doing? I'm good. How are you? Doing great. Doing very, very well. I get it, Rebecca. We're promoting the 8% virtual the next two days. It'll be good. It'll be really, really good. That's right. I'm watching some of the comments. Well, Rebecca, you wanted to chat. Maybe you got a question that people would ask since my dad just jumped on with us for a few minutes. Well, I know you're a little bit about your dad's story and how he was basically working for an organization before he went independent. What was, well, you were doing that because you're very successful in the previous organization. What was the one thing in your mind that just triggered it for you? You'd be like, you know what? I'm going to take the leave. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to leave this and just put it in God's hands and take that leave. That question is actually very easy for me. And the reason it is is that mine was best to renewals for the agents. I had an agent that lived in Little Rock, Arkansas and his name was Paul. And at 57 years of age, he unfortunately passed away from a massive part attack just completely unexpected, perfectly healthy, et cetera. He had built up about $8,000 worth of monthly renewals through Medicare. And so after that happened, I went to the funeral there two days later, his wife calls me and says, hey, Brian, how do I continue those, do I just continue to get those renewals or how does it work? And so I'm just, and that was a tough conversation for me because we work for a career company, which, you know, once you have, you no longer have a, I want you to part the company where there's due to death, disability, regardless of what it is, you lose your renewals, you no longer have those. And so I had to be the one, and I'm quiet on the, you know, I'm just silent on the phone. I'm trying to, how do I tell this like, and before I had a chance to speak, she says, Brian, please, please don't tell me I don't get those renewals anymore. And so after that day is when the ball started kind of rolling a little bit. And cause I always wanted to be a situation to where I never had to have that conversation again. And when a person built up a huge block of business and where they built up $8,000 a month renewals or $80,000 a month renewals, that, you know, they own those renewals. They could sell that block of business. They could transfer the block of business to, you know, to their son or daughter, whoever, you know, and they wanted to kind of follow them in the business. They could do anything they wanted to do with that business. They're best if they passed away, you know, obviously somebody could take that business over for them or they could take that business or their loved one, whoever they may as a beneficiary would continue to get a balance of 10 year renewals on that business. So that was one of the key things for me. If that wasn't a light bulb, nothing's going to be a light bulb moment. I mean, that's, yeah, that's, I mean, $8,000. I mean, that's, you know, $100,000 a year. And they're used to that and they go from that to nothing instantly. Went to zero, just overnight. And no fault of anybody's. I mean, yeah, I mean, that's about his light bulb epic of a moment you could have. Absolutely. Love that. Yeah. So it's, you know, when that day happened, I've kind of, I'd always want to be kind of in it and always want to own an agency. But, you know, when you're, you're making very good money over here. It's kind of hard. And then, but you just got to make the jump. So anyway, so I'm truly glad I did. So. We're all truly glad you did. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Cody, probably the most, but we all love that you did. Cause we get to learn from you. Yeah. Because Cody, someone, he would have been so loyal. He would have stayed with me, even though it would have been his best situation. He, you know, even though I would have tried to push him out to, to spread his wings, he still would have stayed with me. So. T T on YouTube says, dude, his dad looks so young. I like, I like the person. Matt said, question for dad. What was the most challenging time or experience that you ever had as an agent? Most challenging time or, uh, I'm not sure if I, I guess probably the most challenging thing is getting in front of people. And, and I started out in a, in a debit route. I ran a debit route for seven years. So that's kind of a built in prospecting system already. And, uh, so, uh, it's very low comp and very hard work, but it teaches you to ask for referrals. And so, uh, now, uh, most of our business comes from referrals, but can you think of anything that's really the challenging part? Well, I mean, diving to go collect premiums every single month. Yeah. Pretty free to challenge. Cause it's been about 80% of your time, 90% of your time collecting instead of selling, but you know, you got to pay 10% of collections. And, you know, back then it was only 40% of sales. So, you know, obviously you want to spend more of your time on sales. Oh, wow. And, uh, cause literally 90% of your time was, was, you know, spent, you know, collecting. And, uh, that was just part of the, part of the deal. But, uh, uh, I don't know if it was any really challenging times other than just, uh, uh, injuries always, you know, fairly easy with me. I've always enjoyed it. It's always been a passion when something's a true passion. And, uh, you know, it's hard to fail. So, uh, when you love what you do. So. Probably Cody's idea for his first 8%. That was almost a hard attack. So, spending the checks he was riding and, you know, et cetera. That was one that, uh, uh, it was difficult there. So. How many times did you have to sit him down in that first one to be like, okay, can we like not write a check today? Can we wait 24 hours before we write another check? Well, uh, what is someone that, you know, like even when he was, even when he, and some of y'all heard this story, I'll tell it real, real briefly here. When we, uh, Cody was a kid, you know, he was, I don't know, you're what, 12, 13 years of age, something like that. I don't know, maybe, maybe 14. Uh, so we, I come home from work one day and his mom was wanting to kill him, you know? And, uh, and so I was like, what do you do today? You know, and she, and so all my sisters were mad at him to, you know, uh, his mom was mad at him. And so anyway, and I said, what do you do? And they're like, he sold all of our stuff on eBay. And so anything that he could find around the house, the next thing we'd know would just be on eBay. It'd be selling on eBay. And so next thing, you know, and so one day I come home and he's got, he'd went, bought a bunch of boxes from UPS and, and, you know, labels and everything else. And I'm like, what is all this? And he's like, you know, dad, I'm selling on eBay. You know, that's how I make my money. And, uh, what are you selling? You know, and so finally we had to have a rule that, you know, I've got to prove the item before it goes on eBay. So, because he, your sister's laptop, your sister's laptop, he said, well, she wouldn't use in it. So I just thought I could sell it. He's gonna sell it, so. It's a good thing Airbnb wasn't a thing then. If you put in your like your bedroom, sell it there for rent. It's a basement out for rent, so. That is for sure. Every time you went on a business trip, you'd have the master suite up for rent. That is true. It probably would have. Don't give me that. Oh. But, you know, just, you know, oh my gosh. Yeah, cause it comes in. So, but he, he always, always looking to sell something. So, like we would have a funny thing is we'd have, you know, yard sales from time to time and, and so anytime we just put Cody out there and Cody was, you know, he would, he was willing to Dylan and, and I mean, everything at the yard sale would be gone just about. And he wouldn't even buy something, but he'd figure out a way that they, they left with that yard sale out. He made him a pricey cannot refuse. So. Oh, that's funny. This is a still stories about Cody time now. We'll get the most viewers if we just tattle on Cody for the next, you know, how old are you now 30? We got 30 years of ammunition. That's true. You got a lot. Every 31 July. Get old. You guys. This is a mix. What, what are you most excited for the next two days? And then would you say more Brian Tracy, Les Brown? There's several people on that, on that I've looked at the list today. They sent it out. There's a lot of people. I tell you what, every time I listen to, you know, other people speak, I learned something. I get some ideas. I get, you know, every time I go, and I'm not saying just to promote Cody in any way. I promise you I'm not, but Cody can vouch for it. When I go to, you know, the masterminds or go to 8% nation or any of those type of events, I come home and I get our team and you can ask our team. I get our team in the conference room and like, okay, we're gonna do this, this, this. We got to change this and, you know, we can do better what we're doing. And I've just all of a sudden, you know, it's just, but it's a fire that just doesn't go away. You know, I've been doing this for 30, it'll be 31 years come next month. And I'm more excited, work harder than I've ever worked. And, you know, I've been doing it for 31 years because I just see the big picture. And I just, and the big picture just keeps getting bigger and bigger every day. So, I truly truly, my big thing is, you know, I've had a great career, I've had tons of success and just, I've surrounded myself with a lot of great people, but my big thing is I want to leave a legacy to my children that, you know, that they'll be proud of. So. It's so funny you say that because when I come back from one of these events, my office staff always looks like me at like, I have three heads because I'm like, all right, team meeting. And they're like, oh God, now what? What are we doing now? So the last thing I did, they said, you just must have got back from a trip. That's true. No, it's true. I promise you, it's not going to have any ideas. And, you know, a lot of things we're doing today, just ideas we have is simply ideas I've got from other people, you know, because I'm not smart enough to come up with a lot of these ideas. So. Name of the game, it's part of it. Brian, Tracy or Les Brown? Oh gosh, I don't want to drive a BMW or a Mercedes, you know, some Mercedes, but that's, gosh, I don't know. Because I, You had to pick. Oh, I don't want to pick. I truly don't because they're both tremendous. I'm excited about both of them, you know, both of them on a scuffle from one to 10. Maybe if I had to pick maybe a Les Brown, but boy, it's a, I've heard Les Brown less than Tracy. Maybe a 10.0 versus 9.9. So it's not, it's not a, I don't mean to discribe Tracy because I'm excited about that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you used to hear me, his audiobooks is a new agent. So it's just interview him. It'll be on Saturday and it's surreal. I mean, really surreal, it's cool. Because he's, he's a legend, you know, so. Yeah, he's unbelievable. He's, he's incredible. Well, Cody, it's almost seven o'clock and I've been really trying to follow something Josh said at the last conference, you know, we always use the word try. We're going to try to do this, try to do that. My family gets so tired of me being up here until God knows how many hours. So I was before the conference, I was trying to be home by seven, but since the conference, I'm going to be home by seven before except for during AEP, you know, I just sleep here then. So, but it's almost seven and I'm going to hold true to not try and do. And so I'm out of here. It was so fun talking to you guys. Can't wait till tomorrow. As always. So you're always. Thanks for that, Ann. Thanks, Rebecca. Appreciate you. Okay. Thanks for everybody watching. Go to 8% virtual tomorrow. If you've never been, go. I promise you won't be disappointed. Thanks, Rebecca. Appreciate you. See you tomorrow. Rebecca speaking tomorrow. So make sure you show up guys. Okay. Make sure you see her. Okay. Thank you so much, Rebecca. Thank you. We're going to end it as well. Okay. We're still live, but go to 8% virtual and sign up right now. We'll be going two hours and 15 minutes. We're three hours, a couple days ago. We continue to literally try to find ways to make sure that every one of the industry knows. Okay. So do me a favor as you wrap up tonight as you spend time with family, send this to someone. Okay. 8% virtual.com. There's one person in your life that needs to hear the message that we're going to deliver for the next two days. So make sure you register and see you soon. Appreciate you guys. And make sure you hear him speak. Have a great. On Saturday. You're first on Saturday. Saturday morning. Okay. Show up, hear him speak. I can promise you, you will not regret it. Okay. Have a great day.