 For those that don't know me, I got started in the insurance business when I was 19. I was an intern, interning at a local insurance office. Fast forward to 20 years old, I decided to become a full-time insurance agent. I'm in college at Little Baptist Bible College, taking 21 credit hours a semester in Springfield. Someone asked me, Kara asked me last night, is that an NAI school? It's actually below that. It's an NCCAA, which stands for National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association, very small Christian school. I played basketball, which isn't too much to brag about, but I did play ball and enjoyed doing it. At 20, I decided I'm busy, but I'm watching people make money as an intern. I'm like, who's ever had the idea where you're like, if they can do it, I can too, right? Me too. I don't know why. Actually, I do know why, and I'm going to talk about it in my second session. I had an interview with Brian Tracy recently, and I'm going to share some of the nuggets that he shared with me that made me shift the way that I'm thinking and training even today. And at 20 years old, I go to a recruiting meeting. There's 10 people in the room, and the manager says, all right, 10 of you stand up. We stand up. He says, okay, now nine of you sit down. He left one person standing. He did not leave me standing. He said, maybe one of you will make it. I don't know about you, what you would do in that moment or what you would think, but I'm thinking like, dude, if there's going to be a one, I'm going to be the one. Like no matter what. And in that moment, I wrote down, which I'm going to challenge you to do at some point. I wrote down because I'm a big believer in goals. I'll talk about my daily power five at some point. I wrote down, I will earn $100,000 my first year in the insurance business at 20 years old, and I dated it, and I signed it, and I hung it up in the wall of my cubicle. And every day I went out to make that a reality. Now, I was in college playing basketball, practices, tournaments, games, weekends, et cetera, taking 21 credit hours a semester. Thank goodness my wife helped me with my homework, but I could have used excuse I don't have a lot of time, naturally. Like it's natural to do. I wish I had more time. We all get the same amount of time. So by cold calling and cold door knocking to sell life insurance, I earned $117,000 in my first eight months, first ever job in sales, and I learned, you know what, I think I can do this. I became obsessed with this sales game. And I started listening to Brian Tracy's book, The Art of Closing the Cell, back when I was 20 years old in my car every single day. So when I was able to interview him, and I'm going to share that in a little bit, when I was able to interview him, it was extremely surreal because of the impact that he's had on my life. Like we can all look back and say, you know what, that person had a dramatic impact on my life. Bert has the last several years, right? Cardone has, Tracy did as a, Brian Tracy did as a brand new insurance agent. And it was amazing the things that I was able to learn and pick up. And I noticed as long as I wasn't casual and I took it more serious than others, I could do whatever I wanted. Like I watched Ed Milet's speech, Coach Bert was talking about yesterday during his, during his talk. So I wrote it down and went and watched it in the hotel room last night. He talked about how Ed Milet, who's a big insurance guy, he started out cold, he started out cold door knocking to sell life insurance. And he went to his, his managers, his office, they said, Hey, we want you to sell life insurance, but we want you to, we want you to focus on married, middle income, own a home. That's who we sell to. And everybody's making calls. He's like, well, why can't we just go to the door? Why can't we just knock on the door? And they're like, well, that's not something that we do. We pick up the phone and we call them. He's like, I'm going to their door. And he asked them, what should I say? What's the pitch? What do I say if I go to the door? They never done it. But what should I do? Because they get experience and they said, you wouldn't want any life insurance, would you? Like that was the pitch when you get to the door. He was brand new. So he didn't know any better. Okay, that's pretty bad. He didn't know any better. So he goes to first, first day, he goes to 200 doors. You wouldn't want any life insurance, would you? Who knows if you had that much energy or not? One person said, actually, yeah, I do. And then he sold them and they went back to the office and they're like, that worked. And he quickly learned that wasn't the pitch. But what he learned is, as long as you put forth enough activity, you're going to get better. You're going to make sales. Your life's going to change. You're going to make more money and things are going to get really good. And so as a brand new agent, I didn't know what to do. I went out and cold door knocked. I would door knock 150 doors a day. Like I would do whatever it took. And I got to where I was making six cells in a day. Like I would have managers come into me, which is what got me into training. I had a manager call me from northern Missouri, he said, I've got two agents, they're struggling, they're not making any money. Can you help them? We'll find out. He said, can you come up and hang out with them for a couple days? They're not making any money at all. So I went up there and I'm like, I'll take them door knocking. I don't know what else to do. So we go door knocking. And if you can learn to cold door knock people, you can do anything itself. Like you just can. Like you don't get any harder than that. Because cold calling is easy compared to actually cold door knocking. True or true. So much different. So I go up to this office in northern Missouri. I think it was in like Moberly or somewhere, like four or half hours, something like that from Springfield. And there's these two agents, Hunter and Greg. And they're not making any cells. So we go cold door knock. First door, say the pitch, smile, get in, make the cell, high-fiving the clients on the way out. We leave the door and they're like, how the heck did you do that? All right. I mean, I just knocked on the door and talked to them and went in. Five cells later, in one day from cold door knocking, I leave. I go back to Missouri. I leave all the cells, apps, commissions, everything with them. And go back home. And I'm away back home. I said, if I get the opportunity to do that again, I'm like practically in tears. I'm away home because I'm like, I've found what I want to do for the rest of my life. People ask me, do you still sell insurance? Not myself because I help others sell insurance or sell a real estate or anything else. And I learned that day, like that was my passion. That was my calling. That was what I was supposed to do. Now I get a chance to travel and train. My grandfather was a Baptist pastor for 40-plus years. I remember at 10 years old, I'm like, hey, I want to be a public speaker when I grow up, watching my grandpa speak. And I don't know what it was, but I had incredible parents. It made me believe I could do anything in life ever. So in 2018, because I've been putting out videos to help the insurance industry since 2015, the last five years and 45 days or whatever. And we've now got 30,000 insurance agents that subscribe to our YouTube channel. We get a couple million views a month now. But if you watched the first videos that did in 2015, you would laugh too because they were so bad. They were awful. But what you learn along the way is the longer you do something, the better you get, the more confidence you get. So I decided in 2018, I'm going to go start a conference. Grant Cardone's got a conference. I met Coach Bird at a conference. All the insurance conferences are boring as freak. They're old fashioned. We got somebody playing a piano in the corner and it's awful. So I'm like, let's do something and start a conference. So my first conference was at Nissan Stadium in the club area, not outside in the massive stadium. Let me preface. Scariest thing I've ever done in my life. I'm telling you this stuff to get to my first point. Scariest thing I've ever done in my life. Spend a half a million dollars. Get Grant Cardone, Ray Lewis, Coach Bird, Tim Story. The list goes on and on. Spend $500,000, but I didn't have. 500 people showed up, 454. I'm exaggerating and using preacher math as you said a couple days ago. Okay, I'm exaggerating or Austin did and brought in 300 grand for sponsors and tickets lost $200,000. And I tell you that because three and a half years ago, I could only imagine doing an event there. I could only imagine standing here doing an event with Coach Michael Bird. I could only imagine getting to spend the next couple days with you guys doing what I love. And it all started because I had the guts to go get it and the guts to go do what I know I needed to do. There's gonna be a lot of moments in 2020 and 2021 where you don't want to do something. I'm telling you as long as you have the guts to go get it, life will get really good. 8% virtual is back in 2021. Over 10,000 insurance agents will register for 8% virtual on March 5th and 6th. Myself, Brian Tracy, Tom Hagna and other industry titans will be coming to you for two days for free March 5th and 6th. It's coming up quick. Register right now before we run out of seats. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're gonna love. It's right there. Click on it. See you in there. I want to talk to you today about what I believe is the number one mistake that new insurance agents make and why you don't have to make it. Why you shouldn't make it and why I'm giving you the confidence to opt out of making this mistake.