 92% of people fell out of this business, which is insane. You believe there's four reasons why. You believe the first reason is a lack of training. Yes. Yes. So here's the thing. Again, just one man's opinion here. There is an overemphasis on recruiting. What you should be doing as a new agent is learning the craft of selling insurance. So I say a craft because salesmanship is a skill. And it's not something you just do innately. I'm an admitted introvert. During my teenage years, I'd rather play video games. I was too afraid to call Pizza Hut when I was younger. But the point is, in me mentioning that, is that sales is a skill you can develop no matter what your background is with enough time and effort. And going back to your point, if you're a new agent and you're getting into the process so you can recruit other people, you got to ask yourself, what advantage do you bring a new agent underneath you if you've never sold anything before? And the thing is, and again, this is really, this book is directed to new agents more than anything. This is something many of us who are experienced understand this just as the way it is. But many new people have no clue. And the point is, is that the training element of selling is the most important thing to practice, to get better at. Because ultimately, if you want to build a down line or build an agency, more power to you. But wouldn't it be better if you knew what you were doing first and you could relate based off a personal experience? Yeah. I get that question actually a lot, as I'm sure you do too. And I get it a lot. Like, do you think new insurance agents should start out recruiting? I'm like, dude, you can't lead by example, what the heck are you going to recruit to? Yeah. Like, I have made no money and you should join me as I make no money. Yeah. Doesn't make any sense. Hey, I've never cut open a single person doing a surgery, but please trust me, I'll show you what to do. That's good. That's good. So to expand on a lack of training, what kind of training do you feel like is important and what kind of training do you talk about in your book? So the training that's most important, it's going to vary by the person. So some people need more face-to-face training. Maybe they'll do best in an office environment where there's a routine meeting where things are repetitive and there's camaraderie. There's a lot of people that fit that. There's some people that all they need is a script, carrier applications. They'll figure it out as they go. So what I try to suggest agents to do is pick from a cacophony of all of that. Do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that. Expose yourself to different training modalities, I guess you could say, for lack of a better word. And what was your other question? What do you cover in your book in regards to that? Yeah. Basically that, you want to be in a position where you can extract as much information as possible. The other thing I forgot to mention is man ride-alongs are really good. If you can get out in the field, if you're brand new and you can just see it happening, I'm telling you. We're all doubting Thomas' to an extent. And I remember my first ride-along, I went with a guy named Andrew Fike in Atlanta and he wrote like $2,500 in premium in a day. He didn't even start to like $12,000 or $1,000 and I was like, dang dude, this dude didn't do anything that difficult. Right. But that was really important to just get me totally dialed in, invested in the process. So your organization should do all of that for you. If they're not providing this, if they're just throwing you to the wolves without any sort of preparation, there's a problem. Now I will add, I think there's a point where there's too much training or better put, the training you'll ultimately get is based off of you being in the field and trying out an idea and then figuring out what happened if it didn't go the way you wanted it to. You cannot go into this with a perfectionist mindset. So there's extremes on both sides, of course, that you just want to make sure you're managing. Absolutely. I love that you say that too because the type of personality that wants to know everything before they do anything is less likely to be successful in our industry. Yeah. No. It's just, it's funny. To me, I put my agents on a two to four, depending on what kind of leads they get, at least at most I should say a month's worth of time before they should be in the field. You don't need to spend weeks even studying the material. Again, I'm not saying that training isn't important. I'm just saying it will become, there's only so much you can do to start. And then when you apply it and then go back, that's where a lot of the learning happens is based off of real world experience. But I want to see agents out there as quickly as possible because that's where the magic happens. That's where you get to see if this business is right for you. That's where you get to see what you've learned, how it actually works or possibly doesn't and what you can do to modify it. It's all about seeing the people and really learn and experience this business. That's right. Yeah. I learned that a long time ago as a new agent. I'm like, okay, if I sit with so many people a week, I'm probably going to get similar results. And I, most agents felt like you're talking about because they just struggled to get in front of people. You know? Right. It's good. So good. Yeah. The second reason you say is no mentorship. What do you mean by no mentorship? Again, it kind of comes into the same conversation we just had with an emphasis, over-emphasis on recruitment out of the gate. Mentorship is kind of, it means different things to different people. Mentorship consists of coaching, it consists of training, it consists of support. And the thing you have to think about insurance, no matter what you're selling, is insurance is like the old Gilded Age, right? So what's the Gilded Age? Well, that's where your father would teach you how to do carpentry, right? And you would work for him or you'd work for somebody else for like five, six, seven years. And then when you were good enough and you knew the trade well, you'd go open up shop yourself. But there's a direct learning from the master, okay? Where you're the neophyte and you know nothing because you really don't when you get, even if you have a sales experience and you get in this, you don't really know much. You know, this business is different. But to learn from somebody who's been down the road, you want to go and who is a shining example of success, that is so important. If you're finding your mentorship again from people who are untested by the travails in the ups and downs of this business, their wisdom is subject because they really haven't earned any wisdom. They're just repeating what's in a book somewhere and that's never good. No, for sure. I mean, you know what? I talk a lot about coaching and mentorship. I love that you brought, bring this up because I really believe that coaching, being around people, being around people like you and people that you can learn from and spending that time. That's why I love the whole ride along thing. Getting around people that think on a different level and that maybe know stuff that you don't know is so powerful. It motivates you. It challenges you. It puts stuff up here that you didn't have. I love that. Have you read Ray Dalio's principal's book? I have not. Okay. So I suggest picking that. The reason I'm mentioning that is because the one thing, and Ray Dalio is this multi-billionaire hedge fund owner, right? And he's been successful for a long time, eats the markets. And the one thing he says in his pre-section of the book before he gets, it's like a 600-page book, it's very detailed. But he says, a lot of my success is understanding what I don't know in the sense of, okay, I know I don't know about this, so I'm going to find people who can help fill the gaps there. And it's funny too, it's like, yeah, you're right, you know, it's like you can only do so much. And this is very, I'm a very independent person running my business, but I have gaps of knowledge in certain places and you have to rely on somebody else to build yourself back up, to build the success in your business. And as a new agent, you're not going to know everything and you have to be humbled and understand I got to be coachable if I want to actually make something out of this. And if you don't come in humble, you will end up becoming, we will get humbled at some point. Yeah, that's true. That is true. And thank God, I think, you know, it's a good thing to be slapped around, you know, it teaches us some much-needed humility. I know I've certainly had that done to me. No doubt. No doubt. I think I'm learning, and I'm probably behind you at honestly, is you're one of the most humble people I know. And I am naturally a very confident individual and I have to be freaking slapped around every once in a while. I think we all do. Right. Right. It's good. It's good. Yeah. Well, you know, hey, I had a quick story. I have a trainer that provides me meal plan and work out and I have been slacking off on the last, really the last year and a half and just maintaining and what happens is that I had a heart-to-heart with him and he chewed me out, man. And I sat there taking it, oh, it was rough, but it was right. But I needed to hear that, you know. So it's good to have somebody that will correct you if you're, you know, doing something that's not optimal. And that's what I've done in a little bit of time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anything on mentorship before I move to the third reason? Yeah. I think that's good. You believe that the third reason is a not having a system of success. Right. I love that. Yeah. I love that you use the word system. I truly believed as well in our business, the most successful people are doing the same thing every week. Right. Boring, same old stuff, really. Yeah. What's your thoughts on having a system of success? Want me to preach on that? Let's do it, bro. I'd love to hear it, man. Yeah. So the thing is, is that you have to think about insurance sales like an assembly line. Right. You have to not make it, make the complex simple. What really matters in being successful in insurance, insurance sales. And it's what you said earlier, Cody, it's seeing the people doing sales presentations with prospects. But not just that, doing it a number of times a week. I like to talk about the magic number 15. I think 15 presentations is where a lot of the magic happens in this business. And if you're hitting less than that, there's so much variability that you're probably not going to see the results you want. So the thing is, well, okay, I can say I can do 15 presentations a week, or I can say I'm going to write six, seven, eight apps a week, whatever the deal is, but how do I actually get there? Right. So my roadmap from proclaiming a goal and actually achieving it, not just on a monthly or even weekly basis, but a daily basis. Okay. So for me, the big thing I'm talking about on my channel with my agents this year is you've got to be process obsessed, not results obsessed, process over results. Why? Because the process, hitting process goals ultimately produces results, right? So you're going to be achieving, adhering to your system of activity and achieving those daily goals adds up, you know, the first step in a thousand miles kind of thing. And if you're not doing that and you're underachieving those goals, what's going to happen? You're not going to hit your goals. Every time I talked to, well, I'll say every about 90% of the time I talked to agents, you know what they're in biggest reasons why they're not successful? It's because they're not doing enough activity. Yeah. They probably are going to say something like, if I just get in front of somebody, I'll sell them. And I believe them, you know? Or the lead sucker that I'm going to not get with objections or I'm not good on the phone or, you know, nobody wants to buy, you know, etc. Yeah. Yeah. But if you start pulling back the layers of the onions and you see, yeah, these leads suck, I only did two appointments. It's like, well, you only did two appointments. That's what really the problem is, you know? So I think having a system to achieve that is important. And that's going to combine depending on your marketing niche and what you're doing. You got to have obviously a niche, a product that you're selling, say final expense. You've got to have a lead system that's proven to work. Lots of options there. I think mentorship comes along with that systemized approach. And putting on paper your plan of action. And as I say in stock trading, you know, plan your trade and trade your plan. You know? But what you put on paper, make sure that you execute on a daily basis and have somebody as a sounding board to make sure to keep you accountable that you're going to do that. Is there any, how do you recommend an agent keep track of their activity? Or what's important to track? I mean, I'm sure you... Yeah. So I keep it simple. I just have a spreadsheet I created with some formulas on calculating basic metrics like, you know, average no show rate, how many appointments it takes over the phone, how many calls it takes to set an appointment, how many doorknocks it takes to set an appointment, how many leads you need to purchase each week, return on investment. So the thing is that we're basically taking the end goal, right? Which is how much sale, how much money you want to make, right? But you've got to granularize it, go all the way down to the basics, which is, you know, big goals start with prospecting calls. So for me, again, the biggest thing for agents to track is their calls. Is there doorknocks? And from there, how many presentations are they getting and are they achieving their daily and weekly goal? You know, weekly is 15, you work five days a week, you need to do three appointments a day. Well, how many doorknocks or calls do I have to make? You know, maybe it's 50, it's maybe it's 10 doorknocks. Your goal is to do that. And if you just understand that, that if you hit those goals and you're tracking your numbers so you know in live time what numbers are actually you need to hit to hit this, then it'll all work itself out. Yeah, exactly. I was just I was just training and coaching an appointment center and an agent and I was challenging the appointment center to encourage them to track dials, people I speak conversations, appointments that appointments it every single week as a as an appointment center. And it's the freaking exact same thing, you know, it's that system of success. Here's the thing about tracking your activity. You'll automatically see a boost in your results. There's it's been time and time again in sports and business. If you keep track of what you do. There's just something that happens that it gives you a lift in your own, even if you do nothing else differing. You just write your goals down, right? It's kind of the same thing. If you people are most successful in life, write their goals down. They carry it with them. They know what they are. They rehearse them. The same thing. This is the same thing with your systems on paper or online, whatever it is on a spreadsheet. You track it, you keep on top of it. There's just some I don't know what it is, just momentum that builds from it. Hey, if you love the interview, I just got to do it with my good buddy, David Duford on his new book. Then you'll love my interview with Miss Galen Hendricks. Go there right now. Watch it and I'll see you there. When you start thinking about insurance as selling and not as believing, you're never going to sell a thing.