 Ever since I was a team, I've been studying successful people, like Mr. Nadoff. And when you study successful people, they weren't always the same person that they are later. True? Right? Everybody's got to start somewhere. We have so many people that come up and say, dude, I want to do videos, or I want to start to do social, or I want to start to have a brand, or I want to get leads, right? Like Perry's getting freaking 80 qualified appointments every week from his healthy insurance dude Facebook page, right? Because he's investing in branding marketing, and it didn't start out that way. But in two years later, hey, he is now, right? You can tell that nothing ever happens overnight. The same thing is that it's true in our business, by the way. 92% of insurance agents fail because they want overnight success. They think that maybe because I made 9 grand my first month and 117 grand my first year, that like everyone should. And I'm a natural born salesperson that grew up. You got to remember, I grew up in the insurance industry. You know, I had a father figure that was already successful, like just like Sam. So for me to walk in the insurance industry, I was expected to be successful quickly, or I was going to be, I mean, I was going to be embarrassed, right? Like my father came up to me. Most people don't notice. My father came up to me literally when I got my license and said, you will make $100,000 your first year. You're my son. You'll win chairman's counsel. You'll make the top trip to the five store resort in California. You'll make 100 grand. I promise you it'll happen. I was fortunate to have that type of father figure in my life that was already successful, that constantly gave me praise and compliments and shadow with encouragement, everything else. And it propelled me to be like, holy freak, I got to get my act together. Or I'm probably not going to make a hundred grand. And yeah, for those that, you know, I know several of you because you're 80%, at least, Sam, I know my story now. But for those that don't, you know, I was 20 years old in college, playing basketball, taking 21 credit hours a semester, practices, games, tournaments, full-time student athlete. I could have used a lot of excuses, like I don't have time, which a lot of agents use, oh, I got kids, or oh, I'm married, or, you know, oh, there's a pandemic, or, you know, oh, my, you know, my car, I have flat tire, so there goes September, you know. Like, I mean, there's a lot of people interested in history like that. And the only reason why I was successful, there's a few reasons that I'm going to walk through, and I'm going to share some stories. The main thing that I did is I set out and set a goal and said I will. It wasn't maybe it wasn't I'll try, or I can, or I can't. It was I will earn $100,000 my first year in the insurance business. I walked in my first day to a recruiting meeting, and the manager had all of us stand up. And he said, all right, now take a look around. So we start sizing each other up, you know, okay, I can, you know, I can take him. I don't know about her, but, you know, I got him, you know, the reds coming out, I'm getting competitive. Like, okay. He says now, everybody sit down. But you, right? And he didn't pick me, which as a red, obviously irritated me. I'm starting to learn all these colors there. I'm like, man, I love this. It explains so much now. And when he did that in that moment, I thought this dude doesn't know me. If there's going to be a one Marlin, I'm going to be the one Pete. And I wrote down in that moment, I will earn $100,000 my first year in the insurance business. A lot of people in the insurance industry say we're going to do something. A lot of agents have a Tennessee two procrastinate. If it's good enough to do tomorrow, it's good enough to do now. I don't put anything off, right? If I say I'm going to do something later, the easiest person in the world to lie to is you. And I used to lie to myself a lot. I didn't always do stuff when I said I would do it. I finally flipped the switch and I had to punch myself in the face and say, Hey, when you say you're going to do something, you're going to actually do it or you're a hypocrite, right? I mean, I remember in 2018 after throwing the first 8% nation conference, I'm talking about energy is everything and I didn't even work out. So literally for the last two years, I've worked out almost every single day because after the conference, I was like, dude, if you're going to be on stage, you're going to start training and talking to people and trying to become this, you know, public figure, if you own the insurance industry and you don't even work out and you're talking about energy, you're talking about discipline and you're, you know, you're waking up at 6.30 and you're not working out and you're not, you know, you're not, you're writing down goals, you're not writing them down every day and you're not as cool as Marlon because you're not taking a cold shower, you know, and all these other things. And finally, I'm like something I had to wake up. Something had to flip as coach calls, something had to flip the switch in me to be like, dude, you've got to wake up and start to go after this thing and actually do the things that you're saying that other people should do, right? So I'm not there yet, but I am trying to be a better example for the entire industry on things that we should and should not do. I remember like this is freaking amazing to me right now because I remember growing up as a kid. My grandfather who passed away last year, he was a Baptist pastor for 40, 50 years. Most people don't know this. I grew up watching him get up and preach every Sunday, every Wednesday night. We'd have camp meetings, revivals, everything else, right? I'd watch videos as a teenager of Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy and other speakers and I'd watch all these speakers and I would be like my dream one day. I remember saying this when I was, you know, 10 years old. My dream is one day to wake up and be a public speaker is to travel the world and speak and help people. You hear a lot from successful people about how they, nobody else believed it would happen, but they believed it themselves at some point earlier in the future that whatever later would become a reality, right? Nate writes all of his goals on blue cards and like the house thing like freaks me out because he said he was going to end up with a house like this and then he ends up buying the house that practically is a clone of the house that he wanted. Why because he planned to have that in the future ahead of time? If you take a note today, whatever you want to have, you have to decide to go get and whether you believe it or not in this moment, I promise you, you can go get it. I remember when I started doing YouTube, my personal income dipped a little bit. I'd always made well over six figures of insurance and I remember telling my wife, this was back in probably 2015, remember telling my wife, I was meant for more than what I'm doing. I was meant for, I was meant for more than how we're living. I was meant to help more people than I'm helping right now. I was meant to do something like this and I wasn't and I don't know about you guys but that ate me up. Every single day, every single morning, I'm writing down my goals, I'm waking up and I'm not living it. It's not a reality and it's driving me nuts but it doesn't happen overnight. So what did I do? What do you do in that moment when you're like dude, it's not a reality but it needs to be reality. I want to be reality but it's not a reality yet and I know it will be if I get back together. So here's a few things that I did over these last five years consistently that I'm going to keep doing because 8% yeah, it's cool and it's, you know, we're having a great experience and we're getting a lot of amazing speakers and we're trying to make it better. I am not pleased with the event. I'm not satisfied the day after 8% 2020. Maybe a little more than 8% 2019 because I was not at all. But two years ago, you know, I never even planned a birthday party. So, you know, I guess I give myself a little bit of a break, right? Yeah, yeah. But I haven't stepped up like I know I can and like I know I will in the future. I'm telling you 8% nation will, I'm proclaiming it now, will have 10,000 agents in attendance at some point in the future. I guarantee it. I mean, it ain't gonna happen if you guys don't keep coming though, okay? Let's just keep it real, right? But you guys are gonna keep coming if it doesn't keep getting better and leveling up every single year. Nobody wants to go to the same event every single time. Nobody wants to go to an event when they keeps getting worse every year, right? This year, we leveled up a little. Next year, we're gonna level up a lot. I've already got some insane ideas that I'm not gonna share right now that you'll just have to see next year, okay? We're about to go to we're leaving in the morning for a week to go to Destin, Florida. And it's a tradition now that after a big event when you're freaking exhausted and everything else to take about a week off to think about the event that we just did to evaluate, to review, right? To continue to think about, okay, what was great? What sucked? What can we improve? What needs to be better? What creative, crazy ideas can we come up with a team so that it's better next time? And I do that in my business constantly, by the way, right? As an agent, I'm like, how the freak can I get better this week? How the freak can I get closer to my goal this month? How the freak can I get to 100 grand immediately, right? I actually truly believe and you know, I mean, shoot, Nate, Pete, we got a lot of people that could actually probably pull this off. I truly believe that if I wanted to go back out into the field and sell insurance every single day, that I could personally go out, I don't care, you know, field, zoom, phone, it doesn't matter, and write a million dollars of life insurance premium in one calendar year all on my own without a team. And why do I say that? Because in our office and on a wall it says what? Think big. A lot of us are thinking way too small. I'm still thinking too small. I'm still thinking way too small. And I'm gonna use this time over this next week to think a lot bigger, to hopefully go a lot farther. Step one of what I've done over the last five years. Number one, I made a decision to do something. I don't know what that decision is for you, but for me, it was I want to become a thought leader in the insurance space. I want when I pass away, you know, I'm not as old as Nate so maybe I got, you know, 50 or 60 years. Okay? I want to leave a legacy on the insurance business like no one else has, but you can't do that if you're not constantly putting out content if you're not helping a lot of people and you're not throwing a massive event. You just can't. Right? So that was step one for me. I made a decision to do that. Right? Step two for me was determining what my goals were and what I wanted to see happen in the future. Step three for me was I knew that as this thing grew and I was consistent with content that I would need a team around me. That is incredible. Give it up for all of our staff and team one more time for another. And they're good, but we're not there yet. Guess what? Every piece of our organization can get better. They're phenomenal, but we need more phenomenal people. Right? We do. Step four for me was no matter what anyone else thinks, I'm not going to give up on my dreams. Far too many people care what everyone else thinks. Most people are afraid to shoot a video talking about what they do, which is going to help you somewhere insurance, by the way, because I've got friends that don't like insurance or I've got friends that make fun of me or I've got this, that and the other. I've got people around me that don't care for me. I got people around me that aren't supportive or I grew up in, you know what? My parents were supportive, right? Or I don't talk to my siblings or whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's something, it's hard to get started, but Coach Bird always says step one is to show up. Step one is to show up. Once you actually get started, it's amazing. Along the way, initially, I cared what every YouTube comment thought. All seven of them. Okay? All of them. All right? I just did. You go back and look at my old videos. I mean, we're talking just almost dozens of people we're watching. Almost dozens. And I cared what everyone thought. And there was a point where I thought, do people not like this? Is nobody watching? Does nobody care? Am I not helping? Am I hurting? I thought, you know what? My father taught me taught me to be persistent. I told the story about how my first job I wanted to, I was puking in the yard. I didn't want to go to work. And my dad said, dude, you do whatever you want to do, but you know what I would do, right? I saw him show up every single day his entire life. He has never since I've been born 30. He has never missed a day of work in his life. 30 years. Never missed a day. What's step one? Show up. That's the hardest thing for some people. But it's the easiest thing to do, right? They was talking about it. Marshall Silver was talking about it. Wealth, success. Apparently it isn't difficult. It's just different. Showing up makes you a little different. You know, I know the blues don't want to be on time, but hey, that's part of showing up, you know? That's part of it. Showing up. To me in our office shows me that you want to go up. It shows me you want to grow. It shows me that you want to take yourself to the next level. I ask our team and salespeople to do stuff that they don't want to do. Crazy stuff. I had three of them come and run a half marathon with me. They're sitting on the front row right here, and none of the three of them had ran more than a couple miles in a decade. But guess what? They all three finished 13.1 miles. We also have about close to 20 salespeople in our office. Guess which three are sitting right there? The ones that force themselves to do something they didn't want to do, right? They're putting themselves out of their comfort zone. Nobody wants to run a half marathon. Not even people that love it. You know what I mean? They just don't. I don't think they do. I don't know why they would. They're investing in themselves. I didn't buy their ticket to this event. They're like, hey, we want to go to Nate's event. Then go pay Nate to come. Yeah, I'm not like, this isn't my job to invest in your person development self-improvement. Nate says constantly, people only value what they pay for. I'm done giving people stuff for free. Every person I've ever given free stuff for is gone. Every person I've ever given free stuff to has taken advantage of me. Who's seen that to be true? Then let's stop doing it. Nate taught me that by the way. Can associate with the yellows in a big way because I still care. Even though I'm a red, I'm aggressive and I'm freaking nuts. And I've probably got as high of a, you know, 63.5 as high of a red number on my chest. I still care about people succeeding. I still care about people winning. I still believe that I can turn the worst self-person in the world into successful because I'm gonna try to drag them to success. You can't drag everyone to success. You can't want it if you have sales organizations. You can't want it more than they do. Far too many people want it more than the people that they're trying to help. I mean the difference for me was I wanted it more than my sales manager wanted it for me. I just did. And I woke up and went out and went after it every single day. Cold calling, cold door knocking. I didn't know what a lead was. Like how cool is that where people are actually sending like signing with their signature, a card saying I would like more information about this. I'm like holy freak. I wrote like 250,000 a premium my first year. You know, I'm like how much would I have, how much would I have freaking made if I would have had those things walking around? Like I would go to doors and be like, you know, they'd be like, who are you man? Are you trying to like, you know, I mean, what's going on here? Like I would knock doors from Hi, my name's Cody. We've never met to thank you for your business. Welcome to the family. And I'm I am glad I started out cold calling the cold door knocking. It made me more resilient. It made me more persistent. I actually believe most new and she's not popular. We'll put it on YouTube later and I'll get, you know, 50 negative comments. That's cool. Go ahead. Okay. I actually believe that every new insurance agent should start the way that I did. No leads. War market. Cold calling. Let's scrub it. You know, so you don't get fined. Okay. Cold door knocking. Go out and knock 120 doors today and let's see how you do. Well, what do I say? Well, go figure it out. That's how I got started. I bet you'd either figure it out or fail, right? For me, failure was never an option. At some point, if failure is ever in the back of your mind at all, you'll get up and ring the bell. I'm not as in shape as those dudes, but I can swear to you, I would pass out before I rang that flipping bell. I can promise you. I'm doing an Ironman in Galveston, Texas in November 22nd. And if you're like, okay, what's that? Well, it's a half. So the Ironman is even crazier. So 1.3 miles swim in the ocean. It's a 56 mile bike ride. And it's a 13.1 mile half marathon run. Say why the freak would you want to do that? I don't know. So I can say I did it. So I can say I did it. I get bored. Very easy. We bought a new house. $695,000 home. My wife freaking loves it. We got a pool. She's happy. My dog's running around. I go to her and I'm like, babe, I got, I got, I need something to like motivate me, challenge me. She's like, dude, won't you chill out and stop and look around, man? I'm like, no, I need something like what's next, man? What's next? Who else is like that? We're like, dude, it ain't, I mean, it isn't like we're, you know what I mean? It's just, it's not, it's never enough in a good way. It ain't like, you know what I mean? It ain't like it's never enough in a bad way. It's just that I have, I haven't arrived and I hope I never do. I have not arrived and I hope I never do. And the moment you think you have, you're done. You're done. Let me leave with this 16 seconds and counting. I mean, I get done in 12. Let's say five things. Did I say it would give five? All right, you want a fifth one? Take action now. Okay, there you go. I made that one up, but it's a good one. Okay, it's a good one. All right. Thanks, babe. That's more like a green thing to do than a blue, but all right. You're supposed to just go along with this party, okay? I mean, come on. Yeah, that's true. That's, she keeps me in line well. I'm gonna leave you with this. There's going to come a point in the next 12 ones that something doesn't go our way. We're challenged in a way that we didn't see, right? We've all seen that this year. We feel like we're getting pulled underwater and we're about to drown. Can't do anything, right? Nothing's going our way. We think we're going to fail. We're not sure if we can make it. We came and afford leads, but we know we want to succeed. Eric Thomas says when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful. That's the difference between a lot of people that are successful and unsuccessful is when they're in hell week and there's a bell close by they never ring it. Thank you. Hey, if you love this, you'll love how to do a presentation for interest agents. There's a couple pieces of this video that I've never talked about before. It's right here. Click on it. You'll love. Hey, almost every interest agent I know struggles with objections, specifically what to do and how to improve your closing abilities. I'm going to talk through several different things, okay? I always talk about