 This dude did 50K his first month in the insurance industry, 85K in his first six weeks, and to top it all off, recruited 69 flippin' people in his first six days. You think you have to be that much better. That much better looking, that much better in speaking, that much better, that much smarter. And that was a pivotal point in my life where I just went, wow, like, I just have to be this much better. I just got to get up one hour earlier, not six. I just got to stay at the office one hour later. I got to be able to recruit one more person than that person and just do it just a little bit more than the average and I can have room. To me, you know, it's great to have a goal, but without a commitment, it's hard to really achieve or impossible, in my opinion, to achieve what you want. What was so special about you that you could jump into our industry and pull off $85,000 in premium in your first six weeks? Most people don't do that in six months, let alone six years. Most people are felling. You don't even know how to spell insurance. You still have probably very little product knowledge compared to most people and you do 85K in six weeks. It was just hustling and getting on the phone and making sure I had the appointments. And, you know, a lot of people work two or three days a week in the field. That's great. I was working, you know, I wasn't that. I mean, I was working six, seven days. Whenever I could get an appointment, I was running it because I needed to make money. And I wanted to be at a point where, you know, I could make that money. But it's like, I wanted to have the success that I wanted to have and I was willing to give up the things that were important to me to get the success that I wanted to have. And then so many people are not willing to do that. All right, welcome back to another power player insurance influencer. When I say this is an insurance influencer and when I say you want to watch this to the very end, I mean it, and here's why. I'm going to give them all the goods up front so that the next 60 minutes, they don't want to miss a thing. All right, here's the biggest reason. Marlin Faulkner, it's got three, 4,000 views that that interview took off. Marlin Faulkner made about 30, 40 grand for 15 years. He met Nate. Now he's influencing the industry like Nate is, all right? Which is unbelievable. That's impact. You talk about impact, right? I don't think you do it for the money, even though you have a lot of money and you always look good, right? You're driving a sick car, but you do it for the impact. That's the number one reason. The number two reason is this dude did 50K his first month in the insurance industry. 85K in his first six weeks and to top it all off, recruited 69 flippin' people in his first 60 days. Like if that track record isn't enough for you, then turn the camera off. But if that is what you want to learn, then this is the dude to learn it from. You're welcome, bro. You're funny, man. Dude, is that? I appreciate it. We all know his gift is making you feel like a million bucks. So it's a 42 minute flight here. I think it's like whatever I'm feeling down or I'm feeling out or I'm feeling like I'm in a bad day. I'm just gonna book a flight to Springfield, Missouri. I love it, man. Just sit in front of you and you have me, you know. Have you? I feel like I walk on water, but no. Dude, good, man. Good. I appreciate you being here, really. I do. I'm excited to be here. Yes. Marlin did a phenomenal interview. I mean, I've probably watched it. I know his story. I lived his story with him. Good. You know, I was there when he came in and was separated from, talking about impact separated from his wife and was homeless. I'll never forget because it was in November of 2013 and a year later, he wasn't living with his family when I met him. He was on the verge of divorce with his wife. And a year later, he sends me a picture and he's standing there with his wife and kids open in Christmas presents under the tree. And if I don't give you goosebumps, I don't know what will. Yeah, and money can't buy that. No car, no watch. You know, that's right off the bat, right? And I think that's why I know it's one of the connections that we have is that I do what I do when I work so hard is because of the impact that I can be used as a vessel through an opportunity because, you know, if it wasn't for the opportunity that Marlon had, it doesn't matter how much I had ability to help him or impact him. And it was because someone, Cody, did that in my life. And they took, you know, they put up with me and they put up with my crap and my mistakes and my questioning and my failures. And they saw more than me than I saw myself. And, you know, I was a lost case. Marlon talks about struggling for a handful of years. I was working with successful people with a successful opportunity prior to the one I'm involved now and I was still going broke. So I was like the, you know, they had a wall of shame. I was on there of this, this guy may never get it, you know, training after training after training after training, he still didn't get it. So why didn't you quit? Why didn't I quit? Well, because I wasn't a quitter. Dude, most people do that. I wasn't a quitter. I guess not. I mean, I think having the opportunity to see other people around me having success, it's easy to fall in that dark place where you feel like, can I really do it? Now is a question I ask myself all the time, can I really do it? Can I really do it? Can I really do it? But, you know, I just kept being coached and trained that if one man can do it or one woman can do it, so can I. But if there's a hundred or a thousand or tens of thousands of other people doing it, it's just a matter of me learning what it is that they're doing to go out and do what they do and find a mentor who's willing to teach me what they do in order to have success. Right. And when I started this, I gave, you know, I talked about how you were able to help transform Marlin's life, but at the same time, he... Played a small role. I mean, Marlin transformed his life. Dude, he had to show up and commit and really go after it. And he did and when you hear his story, it's unbelievable and it's cool that you were able to play a part in that. What did you see in him though? Like, that's the question that keeps coming to my mind. Sure. I knew Marlin for years. We were friends. You know, I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was in between opportunities, I guess, the nice way I say I was unemployed at the time. But I had a mentor come to my life and helped me have great success and the company that I worked with went out of business. And so I was back waiting tables again and I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I met him through my best friend. And, you know, at the time, you know, I got him involved. I found another opportunity I got involved with was having great success. I got him involved in that and he failed. And I got him involved in another opportunity that he failed at. And then I got him involved in the third opportunity I failed at. And it was like, I think he still owes me 50 bucks. Marlin, if you're watching, you still owe me $50 from that last one we messed up, right? But there is something about him. I knew he had it, right? I knew he had in him what, I believe everyone has in them what it is. We become successful. That he just needed that right opportunity. And, you know, I recruited a lot of people into the business at the same time as him who quit, right? So, you know, as much as Marlin gives me praise and I appreciate that as much as Marlin, you know, talks about how I help mentor and coach him, you know, it was a small role because there was, you know, they say it takes a village, you know, there was a village behind him, you know, with Matt and Brad and Edward and the people he talked about and even people had made no money on and I'm Brian Delaney and everything. All these individuals that are in his life, there was a village connected with an opportunity that he was able to thrive in. And really what he, I think he talked about on his podcast, what really he decided to do, and what was awesome about Marlin was, is that he blindly followed with just pure trust and faith. And it wasn't that he didn't get angry or not want to do it all, but we said, do this and he did it. He may not like doing it, but he did it, right? We said, move left and he went left. We said, go right, he went, go right. And he began to question that he'd catch himself. And it's like, okay, whether it be me or any other people are involved in his success. And it was when he really started doing personal growth, it was fun. I'll never forget the time that we had a conversation. And, you know, I think it's, John Maxwell always says, or maybe he's talked about book, but are you going through life or are you growing through life? And John Maxwell said, you know, what's your growth plan? You know, and we have to hear him speak at one of our events and it resonated with me. And that's a question I ask everybody, like what's your growth plan? What's your growth plan? Because if you don't have a growth plan, you're not growing and no matter how much money you make, in my opinion, you're never gonna achieve the, well, you're never gonna achieve fulfillment. You can make a lot of money and still not be fulfilled. So what most people, I love that you're bringing that up because a lot of people feel like personal development, self improvement, personal growth, all these things are kind of like cheesy. They're not real. They don't help. They don't move the needle. But obviously they have for you. Oh, my life changed when I got involved with personal growth and training and being around people who have thought at a different level. I mean, it does sound cliche. You know, the director's level, the five people have influenced the most. But it's just, what is normal, what's comfortable? You start hanging around kids that have drugs, then it becomes normal and comfortable. So you have good kids that do bad things, including myself and that saying that I was doing drugs, but I was around, when I was in environments where people weren't succeeding, I wasn't succeeding. I was in environments where people were partying and I was partying. When I was in an environment where people were focused and going to church and doing their Christian walk, that's where I was. And I think a lot of people think they're stronger than they are. I think I was realized that I'm only as strong as my influences. And when Marlon started, I mean, he started, it was so simple, five minutes a day, he'd wake up in the morning, he heard a story, gets up at 3 a.m. and go into the gym and do it in 30 minutes, an hour of personal growth. I mean, my God, when I first met Marlon, like a lot of us seem to do personal growth. And then he was at a point where it was just five minutes a day. I remember he'd watch a five minute YouTube video, he'd send it to me, send it out to people, right? And it went from five minutes a day to 10 minutes a day to 15 minutes a day to 20 minutes a day, the 30 minutes a day. And then he started talking different. He started walking different. He started to have a different attitude, a different mindset. And skill is part of it, but without that proper mindset, you're never gonna have, the skill really doesn't matter. So I'm gonna use the word innate a lot today because it's got your name on it. I like innate, there we go, it's innate. I feel like you have an innate ability to. Should we just call it innate ability? There you go, innate ability, A-N-A-T-E. You have an innate ability to physically pull the good out of people or get them to get to another level because someone doesn't jump into the insurance industry and put up 85K in six weeks and recruits 69 people, like did you even flip and sleep? Like you don't do those things unless you have this just ridiculous hunger inside you. And I'm gonna release a secret later on if they watch till the end, okay? Where does that hunger come from? Because it's strong, dude, like it's crazy strong. Yeah, and one of the most driven people I've ever met. Oh, I appreciate that. I always say I'm temporarily motivated to be permanently lazy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It came from a mentor of mine because I was talking earlier on a conversation that me and you and Landon were having. And I always had that drive, I think. When I was little, we didn't have a lot of money. I came from scarcity and my parents loved me but we were in a situation where my dad worked and had maybe $36,000 a year. My family is six, so our Saturday mornings consisted of, and I had three sisters, two older, one younger. And our Saturday mornings consisted of laying out the newspaper before the internet, obviously. Layed out the newspaper and my mom and my sister would be circling all the yard sales that were around the garage sales. We lived in New Jersey and we would go around and buy their people's junk for a dollar. And that was the shoes I wore and the clothes I wore and the toys I played with and we were joking about, well, the kids were getting their Nintendo. I was getting the Atari, right? So, when I had an opportunity, I started working when I was 13, but I was shoveling driveways in New Jersey when I was nine years old. And I'd go out there and you could get five, 10, 20 bucks a driveway. And when you're nine years old, man, that's big money. So that's the entrepreneur inside, as a kid. Yeah, as a kid, and you'll see a lot of that. People ask me all the time, they're like, oh, how come all these success stories, it seems like they had this really, oh, I came from this and what was me and I had this big turnaround. I believe, because when you come from that scarcity, it creates a hunger inside you that no, a fire inside you that can't be put out. Because you know what it's like, right? And I'm not saying people that come from successful backgrounds can't be successful because your father was successful. That's true. Here's a story, you weren't living on someone's couch. I'm sure you had obstacles or struggles, but you had that, I like to know where that hunger came from you, because I understand where that hunger comes from. When you're down and out and you're at points where you're always bouncing from one couch to another couch to another couch and literally going to the grocery store, right? Literally going to the grocery store, pretending to shop so I can eat a meal. Like, I wish they had like Sam's Club in Costco. I don't like going to the grocery store still to this day because it gives bad memories, right? So you said, you ever go to the grocery store and you have like a cart that's like sitting in the aisle and it's fully packed and no one's there and like no one's manning the cart. You're like, I wonder whose cart that was? Probably mine, because I'd be pushing it around the grocery store and grabbing a banana and grabbing a granola bar and grabbing a bagel or the donut thing out and go into the office, you know? So, you know, when you have, you know, Sam's Club now, Whole Foods, I mean, my gosh, all those whole bars and be free, dude. Just walking in there, all this, hey, we like to try the hot pocket, heck yeah. How about one of those pretzel buns? I'll take two, you know, be free. But, you know, at nine years old, I wanted to have that money. And then, you know, I think my upbringing, because I grew up in a Christian home, I grew up in a church where, you know, it was like, you know, give back, you know, and do good to our others. It's like, I take it, I'm not saying this for anyone to be like, oh, you're so impressive. You know, at nine, we didn't get to go out to eat. Like our family vacation was driving from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, Ohio, which is not Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is this tiny little town with one traffic light and a little corner store. It was actually kind of cool, you know, and I don't know why, but it had a metal slide. And so it was 100 degrees in August. I mean, that was always fun trying to get on the metal slide. I think they changed that now. I've been on a slide lately, you know, and that was our vacations, or we get to go to the shore once in a while. And it was a big deal to eat out at McDonald's. It was a big deal. You know, if we had a steak, there was a T-bone steak and a family of six, and it was chopped up and, you know, shared amongst all of us. And that was like a big deal. So I go out and make this money. And then after church, I take my family out to Red Lobster. And it was just like that, you know, feeling of like, wow, that's awesome. Like, so from a young age, I was able to have that feeling of like, I can go out and work and do it because I know the end results and impact. Right. So I wasn't doing it because I wanted to make $100 at nine years old. Sure. As I went through driveway to driveway and your back's hurting, your hands are freezing, your cold, my mom would even come pick me up and drive me to the next house. She'd follow me as I went down and knock on the doors until someone said yes. And I'd be like, all right, mom, and she'd drive home. And at a young age, that was kind of instilled in me through just, you know, the situation I came from and the upbringing of different things. And that was back when you were nine. How old are you currently? Well, yes, these questions, right? I don't know, how do I look? I honestly lost count. 39. I was born in 75. I think I'm 44. March, 1975. I think I'm, I'm ready to turn 45. Maybe I'm 45. Yeah, you'll be 45. March what? I can't do math. March 25th. Okay, good dude. Here you go. It's coming up, right? Wish you a happy birthday on March 25th. It's coming up soon. Don't do that, please. I always say, don't wish me happy birthday. Dude, if you tell them not to do it, they're gonna do it. No, because I'm not gonna wish you one, then I feel bad. No, seriously, I tell people that. Like, I, I, I, I don't want to try to remember your birthday. That's not their fault that you don't wish you a happy birthday. I don't want to try to remember everyone's birthday. Okay, so you were nine. What was, what was 15 year old Nate like? Oh boy, man, how are you writing? High school. Take me back. I was not the cool kid in high school. I was very insecure. That's hard to imagine. That's hard to like, you know what I mean? Almost 45. Like, you know, confident little, you know, you got some swag, you make good money. Like, you know, awesome wife, great house, sick car. I have a phenomenal wife. No doubt. Beautiful wife, phenomenal wife. Her heart, heart of gold. I mean, I love my wife Laura. Just amazing, amazing woman. I mean. It's kind of crazy how sometimes that reverses where the senior that everyone thinks is the greatest dude in the world. When he's 44, he's sleeping on his mom's couch. And you're like supposedly not cool in high school. And now you're like, you know, the dude that everybody wants to hang out with at 8% nation. I was way not cool. Probably mostly my. It's weird how that works though. Yeah. And I was insecure and I got picked on a lot. For what? Just, I was a young kid playing sports, right? So the upperclassmen, you know, would be picked on a lot. We go to these soccer camps and you know, I guess they call it hazing. But back then it was, you know, fun to combine and give you a wedgie at lunch. Sure. You know, wake up and there's baby powder, you know, five gallons of baby powder through your whole entire room, which I found out now could have killed me, but you know, and getting stuffed in lockers and putting trash cans and, you know, by the upperclassmen to get made fun of. And I'm sure a lot of people, you know, like that, but I wouldn't have this like miserable high school years. But people go, man, don't you wish the great old days of high school, you wish you'd go back? I never want to go back. I just didn't have that confidence. And I just was very insecure. I cared what everyone thought, you know, and what clothes I wore because I didn't have all the nice stuff. Cause my dad worked for mission boards. So we he was able to get discount tuition. So we went to Christian school, but most other kids that went to the private school had money. So here you are in an environment where everyone's got money. They had the latest Nikes, the latest, you know, Reeboks or whatever it was popular, Z-Caveriches with a little white Z-Caveriches. You don't, you don't know what those are. I don't know. No, I definitely don't. Z-Caveriches, so you guys know. Back in the day, like Saved by the Bell, where we're rolling our bottom pants, you know, and rolling them up. Okay. And just in New Jersey, this was in New Jersey, yeah, in Cherry Hill. You've been back to any reunions? I have not, actually. I missed the last one. You graduated from there though? I did graduate from high school. Thanks for your confidence. But yes, I did make a pass. Not college, but I made it past high school. I have not gone back yet. No, I just, interesting. And it was funny because when I was broke and I was, it was one of my biggest motivators. Like, you know, I meant to always talk about having an action motivator. You know, it's like, it's good to have a why, but like what's an action motivator? Like what's gonna get you out of bed in the morning that you don't want to give up and you don't want to stop and you want to do whatever it takes at cost. And I would go through these trainings and one of my action motivators was to go back to, go back to that high school reunion, pull up with a beautiful, sexy wife, you know, have a Lamborghini or it's two, $300,000 car with a $20,000, or McClaren, right? $20,000, you know, a Rolex on my arm, you know, walking around with pictures of a mansion I lived in and it was, it was a driving force. And I never forget, my mentor said, look at that action motivator and it's gonna motivate you, but I'm gonna tell you something's gonna surprise all of you when you actually achieve success, you won't even care anymore. And I was like, there's no way, man. So true. And I had like three or four action motivators. You don't even care to go back. You could care less. Also, ex-girlfriend, like I pull right in her driveway. She said I wasn't good enough for parents because I was, I was, you know, I thought I had my love of my life at 21 years old and you know, I remember we broke up and her parents kept saying he's not good enough. He can barely afford to support himself. He's not going anywhere in life. And I remember I had that action motivator, man. I wanted to pull up in my nice car and when I'm making money one day I'm gonna pull right to her parents and say, hey, how are you guys doing? Remember me? And he was right though, when you finally started, I'll tell you what it is. Now, if I didn't grow, I probably would have done it. But when I reached the level of the financial success that I thought where I was going for because I was growing along with it, that no longer had a, you know, what was bearing on it? It didn't matter. What was the number for you? Like everyone grows up, say your early 20s and you're like, all right, I want to be successful. I know mid 20s you start getting like network marketing and stuff like that. What was the number for you? Because back, I remember for me, I've never shared this about four years ago, I thought even five years ago, maybe I was like, man, if I can just get all this that we're doing now to just $5,000 a week. Oh man, everything will be great. You had bigger visions than I did. Mine was 10 grand a month. Okay. I mean, I thought, of course I'm older than that. Now you've made that in a day, a bunch. You loves to go here with me, I don't know why I like to go here with me. Dude, everybody likes talking money, yeah. 10 grand a month. Like I thought, when I get make 10 grand a month. It's over. I'm gonna have house with pillars, circle drive lane. I'm gonna have, I write a driver driving me around. You know, I was gonna have my own. Half of that. My own limousine. I know, but like that was my vision of 10,000 a month. I mean, I never forget. We all go through that. Yeah, I never forget the first time I made 10,000 a month and I'm like, like there's 10,000 a month. This is like, I can barely afford to live. Like maybe it's 50,000 a month, right? Maybe it's 100, you know, so that obviously changed. But you know, again, you know, growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. I mean, six figures now. I was reading something in an article. I think it was in Forbes or Inc. 5,000 or some business journal online. And they were saying, you know, $100,000 a year back when was a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what year? Like 90s or something? Yeah, like in the 1980s. 80s school. 1980s and 1990s, $100,000 a year was a big deal. But back in the 1990s and 1980s, you could buy, you know, something for a third of the cost. They said today, right now in 2020, in order to make $100,000, this equivalent to $100,000 a year, you'd have to make $370,000 a year. Wow. So like that $100,000 mark that we were all pushing for, like I can make a 10,000 a month, which is really $8,333 a month. That's what I push for. The mathematicians that are out there. But $10,000 a month, now it's more like you gotta make $30,000 a month. Wow. To be at that same level based upon what used to cost then a gallon of gas to what it cost now, lower bread to what it cost now, whatever you wanna, you know, look back and see what was that lifestyle buying you versus what's buying you now. Okay, so let's fast forward to 20s. You talked about being 21, you know, getting rejected all that. Take us through your 20s. When you start trying to find success, you start working, you start trying to make money. I know that. The keeper there was trying, yes, I tried. Yeah, I mean, dude, you struggled a little bit. I struggled tremendously. It's insane. I wouldn't imagine someone like you, like super talented, uber talented, struggled. You know, well, if I had, if I was half of what you have at your age, I wouldn't, I'd be a billionaire right now. I'm not saying, I mean, like the, who you are as a person and you've had a lot of, I'm gonna do an interview. How many of you guys want me to do an interview on code? Yes, yes, I think that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna call out, you know, if you want me in the comment section, you win a drop, I'll come make another special trip out here. We're gonna switch seats and we're gonna put Cody Askins on the hot seat I think there's a lot of people that are out there. We can do it in the morning. You're always interviewing, well, maybe I'll do it in the morning. Let's see how many comments we get, right? People would eat that up though. Well, I would personally, just cause I know how good of an interviewer you are. Oh yeah. And how good you are with questions and getting stuff out of people. It almost be scary. Maybe I don't want it. Maybe you don't want to do it. I'll have some good questions for you, but you're an impressive guy. Thanks buddy. And I want to know what made you that impressive because my son's 13 and if I can have the same influence your father or your upbringing or the people around you to put you in the situation you're at with my 13 year old boy. I mean, that would be priceless because there's no manual on how to be a dad. He's a total different. He has a total personality like you where he's, everyone loves him. He's like your son's so great. He's such a sweet guy. He's such a nice guy. He's good looking like you. And so if I can go, okay, how? And you're not, we're very alike but we're polar opposites in our personality. And so this type A to my son is kind of like, so I would love to do that interview just for me whether we have the cameras rolling or not because I would love to say how can I be a better father? How can I learn from the situations who made you who you are and to help my son get to that level? Because my son listens to 15 minutes of personal growth every day. Wow. What do you have him listen to? He's listened to audio books. He's listened to Think and Grow Rich twice. He's listened to how to win friends, influence people. You think those books should be taught in school? Don't get me started here. We'll be over the next hour. The answer is absolutely yes. We talked about that earlier in our podcast. Yeah, we did. He's listened to Mindset by Carol Dweck. He's listened to the training that we do in terms of personalities types where my mentor taught me, how you can meet someone within 30 seconds to a minute and identify their personality, not to find their inner child or who they are the disc or the ENTB or the drive. There's four basic personality types that everyone knows. But how powerful would it be to be able to identify the main one and the sub main one within less than three minutes and to be able to deliver information to them in a way that they want to receive it? That's something you talk a lot about. I talk a lot about because it was a pivotal point in my life. My son studied that. I put him in front of a room of hundreds of people and I showed him a picture, said two or three key phrases and 100% right. Boom, boom, boom. So now I got him on Caleb Maddox. I love that kid. Oh, yeah. Because I mean he's a kid, changing the kid. You know, in my company SWAT, Strategic Wealth Accumulation Tactics or SWAT Financial, it had a double meaning. It was students with advanced training. So how would it like to be a SWAT kid? So my goal was, okay, maybe I shouldn't say it, someone's gonna steal my idea, but you go to all these events, they're gonna steal, it's good. It'll stay private, nobody will steal anything. But you got all these events, right? Whether it be Tony Robbins, the Herbal Life event, whether you go into an 8% nation, whether you come to whatever company that you're in, whether it be symmetry or if you're in a family first or Equus or any of these companies that are out there and they have all these adults and all the adults are going into a room to learn about leadership skills and how to be a better person and how to extract, and we're all the kids at home. What if you had a section where, hey, you can bring all your kids 8% nation, but oh, by the way, in the wing next door, we're doing a leadership program for your kids. Students with advanced training. What if the kids were learning about growth mindset versus fixed mindset? What if you had a Caleb Maddox or any of these other influencers or these kids who went through, who were inspiring and teaching that language of success to your kids? I mean, I get goosebumps. That's good, dude. Can you imagine? No, I can't, that's good. Can you imagine that family unit when you're coming out? Because Caleb talked about it. So I started watching a little bit of Caleb and he has a thing called Apex for Kids. All right, Caleb, just like it. I know there's 1,000 people watching us, right? And you said, so there we go, we want a dollar per sign up, you know? There you go. I don't know how that works. Filiate. But Apex for Kids, and I have him on there every day, 15 minutes. Wow. And he's walking through, I mean, one day he wakes up in the morning and you know how kids are, right? You go in there and I'm like, did you stay here last night? Because he's my stepson. So he goes back and forth with me and his father. And he goes, yeah, why? I said, well, your bed's made, which you usually have to tell. Right? He's like, well, Caleb said, I need to make my bed every morning. I'm like, dude, that's awesome. Wow. And he's sitting down at a burger joint one day. When he was like 10 or maybe 11. And he's got his iPad out to her and he looks at me and his mom and he goes, I don't mean to have a fixed mindset. I'm just not that good at math. What 11 year old kid even knows what a fixed mindset is? Like he knew not only what it was, but he was having one saying, I don't mean to have a fixed mindset. That's impressive enough. Right. And so we started talking about how to program the subconscious mind and kind of went there. So to your one point, the school system is so antiquated on what they're teaching. They can find this stuff online. It's like, it makes me ill and sick to my stomach that we pay millions of dollars to athletes who can catch a ball and, you know, running four seconds a certain distance on a field. And, you know, and we can barely pay our teachers who have our children eight hours a day enough to even survive. I'm waiting for a Jerry Jones to come in and buy a school. Can you imagine recruiting for school? You have tryouts and interviews and vetting probably, could you imagine like what kind of schools? Right? I mean like, but no, it's just like, here you go, we'll get paid just enough and promise you a pension that one day in your retire, you can barely live on that as well. And I just think they're failing. I mean, the schools are failing. So someone needs to step in or a group of people need to step in and start teaching our kids what really matters in life with those principles. Which is no doubts on your McLaren license plate, by the way. You have to always throw it in. Back when you were... It doesn't say no doubt. It does say no doubt. Leave no doubt, bro. Leave no doubt. That's how it says in the back of my sweatshirt. Leave no doubt. Leave no doubt. When you were in your 20s. Yeah. You didn't think like this. I went through the same school system you went through, Cody. And then unless you went to a different school, I spent 14,000 hours from kindergarten to the 12th grade learning math, science, English, history. Over and over and over again. And then I thought, well, maybe when I get to high school, then my mentor talked about this, right? My mentor talked. I thought to high school, maybe it's better. Oh no, math became algebra. Science became biology and chemistry. History became social studies. And I thought, well, maybe when I get to college, that's where I'm gonna learn the keys to success. And it was the same stuff just harder. So 14,000 hours from kindergarten to the 12th grade where most of my life I was spent, I know you find it hard to believe, but I was kind of the black sheep of the family. Well, I wasn't actually a family. And kind of a little bit of a ruckus in the school because I have a blessing and a curse at the same time. I can hear something and literally pretty much memorize 80% of it the first time I hear it or read it. The problem if I don't use it, I completely forget it. So the problem is a blessing versus a curse because I can hear someone do a seminar or a training and I can literally almost sit down and do the training right back to you 80%. But if I don't use it or write it down or constantly integrate it into my daily activity, I forget it a week from then. So here and I am in school. So think about it, right? Hyperactive, tons of energy. I always had this much energy. I always had a bundle of energy, right? I just had the confidence because I was beat down my whole life for my school teachers. Everyone else was like, why do you do this? And who do you think you are? You're not gonna amount to anything. And I remember one time my Bible teacher came into the class. He walks in, I mean, think about the amelioration, right? It's funny now, but it wasn't funny then. He walked into my room, picked up the desk and said, I'm not mad at you. You're not in trouble, but I just can't handle you today and put my desk outside of the room. Yeah. And so I can memorize. So in grade school and stuff, I did really, it was good. It was easy. I memorized verse, memorized it. It was all about, school is all about how well you can memorize. Totally. Here's information. If you can regurgitate this, you're smart. Which I think most of us realize when you get out of school, that ain't the case. Yeah. So I did well in grade school and high school because I can memorize most of stuff. But then college is a different story. Do you think spelling and math are the two things in school that relate to business the most? I don't know why you put me on the spot on that one. No, cause you can buy Grammarly for I think $19.99 a month that spells for you. Make sure your things are done and you can use a calculator. That's true, you can. Maybe that's not the answer you wanted. I personally don't think spelling and math relate to this. That's two things from school that like, you know what I mean? I feel like it benefited me personally in business. I'm great with numbers and I can spell. I think math is definitely important. But I don't think, I don't think one of the Isocelies Triangles helped you in business. No. Or what a dangling participle is, right? No. You only know what that is. No, I have no idea. So to a degree, yes. So I guess, you know, I think that our kids obviously should be educated, but it comes to a certain point, like why not let them go towards the things that they are attracted to, right? But again, we could waste a lot of time on that. So I got kicked out of college twice and I got, I talked a little about this with you landed already, but I got drugged down to a meeting with a bunch of people and do it from a friend of mine. Yep. And we were sitting there and it was a network marketing company. And I didn't know what network marketing was, right? I was like, all I did was there was a bunch of people that were excited. They were happy. They were talking about saving the planet and cleaning up the environment. And, you know, I'm 20 years old. I suspect that I smoked. I smoked a cigarette before I got into the things. I'm like, environment, shmiromint, like I need to go have a cigarette. But I was stuck in the middle so I couldn't get out. I'll never forget they wheeled in this, they wheeled in this cart with a VCR. So no, I know. You guys know what those are still? VCR. Barely. Barely? My son didn't know. My favorite Larry Bird documentary was a VHS. Okay. My son goes, what's a VCR? When I was growing up. I think, I don't watch a lot of YouTube if someone sent me a video. I think the funniest video that I saw was when the parents told their kid that they would pay them 20 bucks or 100 bucks if they could dial this phone number from this phone. They took a rotary phone and they still get to watch it. It's hilarious, right? Someone said to me and I was just crying, laughing. And they had this rotary phone where they had to dial the number and they're like taking it off, putting it on. It's a good watch. You got to watch it. That's funny, that's funny. And they couldn't do it, right? Yeah. They couldn't do it. And they wheeled this TV in, it was color, right? But it had a VCR tape and they popped it on. And there was person after person after person. I used to be a preschool teacher and I made millions of dollars. I used to be a pot and pan doing salesman. I made millions of dollars. I used to be a social worker. I had success and made millions of dollars and here's my lifestyle. And they're showing their homes and they're showing their... It was back in the 90s where wealth was cool. Back in the 90s, wealth was cool, right? It was cool to have wealth, right? And so the gentleman who eventually became a mentor came out and he was leaning against this car. It must have cost half a million dollars. I mean, it was like some type of a Bentley, convertible, you know, prestige massage. Obviously I had no idea what it was. It was just like, wow. And he stood there and he goes, you know, where are you gonna be in the next five years to keep doing what you've been doing? And where can you be in the next five years if you follow the man that built the path, that built the track to follow who's taken other people down that track and they wound up immensely successful. Where could you be if you just did what they did? And I went, first time in my life. Basically I can cheat to success. Yeah. You know, because in college, I did a little bit of cheating in high school. Sure. Not proud of it. I think we all cheated and if you guys haven't, don't admit to it, you're a liar and a cheater, right? I'm sure I did. But, you know, you sit next to the person in class, it gets a good grade and there's really no shock and wonder why your grade's the same or very eerily similar if you purposely missed one so it didn't look like you were coughing. And a light bulb in my head, I said, man, you know, I wanna work with that guy. I wanna have an opportunity to be coach and mentor. He was just so encapsulating and he helped so many people go from nowhere to somewhere and that was my beginning of my mission to seek out success and be an entrepreneur. How old were you? And I sucked at it. I was 20. How much money did you make? How much money did I make? How much money did I lose? Well, walk us through the next few years then. Oh, boy, man, I went broke fast. I had a lot of growing to do. I had just, again, I wasn't me, you know? But going through that process from going to the different trainings and being in a training environment and how I learned to speak was because we'd have these presentations where people would come in and we'd run an ad and come in and be in an environment where you had eight to nine, 10 people and you'd be up there and you'd be pitching the company, right? And it was funny because like, you know, now they have everything online, you got landing pages, like people don't even understand, I guess really that what that did for me. Because you're there, we had, you know, a presentation every day at one o'clock, every Tuesday and Thursday night at 7.30 and every Saturday, we had a presentation and a Saturday training. So when you were full-time, you're in the office, you're running ads and you're answering phone calls and you're putting bodies in a chair and you're doing a presentation. And I didn't start right away. I never forget where, you know, I was sitting there and you're raising your hand, you're smiling, you're hearing the same jokes from the same guy every day. Eight times a week, right? You know, you're still having to be up there and intense and excited about what's going on. And I remember one time, and you think you got it, right? It's the same thing in success. You think, oh, I got this. How hard can this be, right? You start having these self-talk, like, oh, God, can you not come and think of another joke? This is so simple. Can't wait till I can get up there and do it. And I'll never forget the guy was sick that day. And one of the managers of the office came in and said, you're up. I said, I'm up where? He said, you're doing the presentation today. What? And I never, like, spoke in front of people doing it, right? I was like, you're doing the presentation today. Right, and there's like eight people. Oh, my God, that was awful. I got up there, you know, like one of those dry erase markers, right? So I'm sitting there clicking it. You know, you watch someone click, I'm sitting there trying to click, put the clap cap coming on and I'm walking up and I'm like, so how's everyone doing? And if you ever go and hear a speaker say how's everyone doing it, means he's not doing so good. And so I'm like going through this presentation, I'll never forget, I'm in Dayton, Ohio, because my school is, I went to Cedarville University, or Cedarville College back then. I think it's a university now because they got a couple more students who are big enough at their university. And Dayton was the closest office, like 30, 40 minutes away from my college campus and where I had an apartment that I was sleeping on my friend's couch from the apartment. And I'm just like going, trying to go to the college, trying to go to the college, I'm just like going, trying to go through the presentation and they're sitting there, rolling their eyes and I'm trying to commit to how they become successful marketing, water filtration, air filtration, everything else. And I'm sweating, I just, I hijacked his office, thank God, because I run hot, I don't know why. So I have it down like 60 degrees in here, so I'm not sweating. But normally I'm just like pouring sweat, right? So back then it was a suit and tie, I'm pouring sweat and I'm trying to talk to them and stuff like that and I'm writing on the board and I'm erasing the board and I'm sweating, you know and I'm writing on the board, the dry race board and I'm erasing the board and I'm sweating, right? And all of a sudden people start kind of chuckling and I start laughing, I'm like gone. Yeah, and I'm telling more jokes and I'm a natural, I'm a natural, right? And they're laughing and they're doing that. I'm like, yeah, I got this man's name and finally one lady, she raised her hand, she goes, excuse me, sir, you have marker all over your face. Cody, I was humiliated, I was humiliated. I went to the bathroom, right? And I thought there'd be like a little smudge, man. It looked like I was doing Braveheart, man. I had green down the center, because as I was wiping the board I was sweating, I was wiping my face. I swore I would never do that presentation again. I was like, I am not, I was just humiliated. And when you get to that point, man, all those things flashback from your childhood like your humiliation and what you went through and how you're, you know, all that self-confidence thing. So it was such a up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. You know, and have a little bit of success and then you lose success, and you lose success and when I, I failed and it was so hard because I was in an environment where other people were succeeding. And that's the worst. It's bad when you fail, but when you're in an environment you're watching other people win around you and you're not winning. That really takes a toll on you. And when I had an opportunity to finally connect with my mentor, I'll never forget it. I accidentally won a contest, which I don't want to go into details, but I accidentally won a contest by default. The other person I guess couldn't make it to his house and he had a event where it was two days with him, right? And I can never, when you have a chance to hang around somebody who is at the top of your field and know, I mean, like you paid access for Grant Cardone. That's right. Somebody go, that's crazy. He spent 25, oh, I shouldn't totally know how much he spent, but that's fine. You know, put 25 grand for a mastermind with Grant Cardone, oh, I can watch it. You know, you would spend 15. Like, what, it's invaluable to be in a room, right? A room like that. That's so true. Right? Or whoever it is that you do. I wouldn't have understood that five, 10 years ago either, though. Right. You know what I mean? So if they don't, it's okay. It's like, I didn't either. Right. And so I had this opportunity to hang out with them, right? And I was like, oh, this is my chance. I mean, this is the guy, the mentor I wanted to work with, you know? The only time ever I'll say met him, actually the first time I met him was embarrassing because like he would do these seminars and there would be 13,000 people showing up at the MGM Grand Theater, or there'd be 3,000 people, you know, at a regional event that he'd be at, or 12,000 people and, you know, people would try to shake his hand and line up for, you know, hours to shake his hand. And I can never forget, like I, it was at a regional training and I was using the restroom and in walks, he walks in the bathroom. Anyway, he's standing in the urinal next to me. I was like, I'm not gonna have a conversation. That'll be weird. But I'm waiting for my turn, right? As soon as he turns around, right? I remember, I'm hoping he forgets this, but we turn and I said, you know, so-and-so, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Nate Offert and he looks at me. You might want to wash your hands first and he walked right over to the sink, washed his hands and walked out of the room. I was like, oh my gosh, like really? There is my chance, there is my chance. And that's how I presented myself. So I'm like, that was a real, I'm sure he forgot, doesn't even think about it or no, probably. But I had a chance to go to his house. And this is where my life really started to change because all these other people were kind of scared and nervous and intimidated. And I'm like, go, I don't care what he thinks about me. I'm gonna ask him his main question. And I would call him. I'm like, so what about this? And what about that? And what about this? And what about that? And he'd get up and move and go over to the pool table and I'd follow him to the pool table. And what about this? And what about that? And he'd go over to the pink pond table. And I mean, I was probably the, I know I was the most annoying person there. But like, I had this guy who was making a million dollars a week. I mean, my mentor was making a million dollars a week net net. He has a face on the front cover of Ink Magazine with 35,000% growth in a company in five years. He created from scratch before the internet. He was in VHS tapes before having the ability to have massive social media. Now that 1.8 million people he recruited in a five year period of time and was 35,000% growth in five years. A million dollars after his $20 million mega yacht after his seven Lamborghinis and nine Ferraris and his Vector painted like the, what is it, the American flag on it with the Statue of Liberty and the car that had a bullet hole through his steering, Elvis Presley's car that had a bullet hole through the steering wheel he shot through and his 52 car exotic car collection and homes all over the country. And a quarter million dollar watch on his arm cost the most, more than most people's house. And I know today that's offensive, right? That's when it back when it was cool, right? Now they want you to make 10 million dollars, give it all away and drive a Prius, you know, I get it. You know, you got to hide your stuff now or else they think, oh, who's that awful evil person with nice stuff, which I don't get, but you know, things have changed. So here I am in his house in Summerland Vegas, right? I mean, I walk into the door, I look up and there's a probably $180,000 Harley-Davidson collector edition as a ornament above his door as art. I mean, who do you know that has $160,000 Harley-Davidson like collector edition poised above his door, right? You know what I'm saying? And like these marble crystals everywhere. And I mean, I just never, you know, I shared a bathroom with three of my sisters, you know what I'm saying? Like, I was like, I just never been in there. And I'll never forget, because it's the second day and he's like, you know, I came into the boardroom because I had a boardroom at the office and I was dressed up in my nice suit, suit I bought at Sears, because it's the only place that would extend credit for me to have a suit with Sears because I ruined all my other credit. I just don't create a financing. Because back then like Sears and other places they give you credit cards. We'd get the credit cards at like Sears. I can't remember the other store that would give us one. I shouldn't say this, maybe Sears might come after me. But anyway, we'd go buy a whole bunch of stuff like lawn mowers and everything else. And we'd go back and turn them back in because they would give you cash. So I get a lot of credit at Sears or the different places at Jay-Z Pays and we'd buy a bunch of stuff and then we'd turn it back in and we'd get cash. And that's how we were able to eat and how we were able to run ads and do our things that we did. There was some creative financing. Definitely some creative financing. And I had my suit on and I forgot my shoes. Not only was I probably the most annoying person he's ever dealt with in his life, there I am walking with my suit in my flip flops and he looks at it and he goes, nice shoes, nice shoes. You know, because this guy was like a celebrity, right? In the rain. And he goes, does anyone else have any questions? He goes, I hope the guys enjoyed your weekend. Does anyone else have any questions besides Nate? He said that? And then he was done. I didn't care. I said, can I have your pager number? I think he had the first cell phone that looked like the one you plug in your car, your battery you carry around, another one that looked like that. And he gave me his pager number and that was the day my life changed because when I had an opportunity to go to the source, his favorite thing was, he talked a lot about whisper downline information. Like if someone has a top, has 100% information, they teach somebody and they teach somebody and they teach somebody that information gets watered down. You remember like play whisper on your little kid? I was at the source. I wasn't getting 3, 97% of the wrong information anymore. I was at the source and he used to say, who taught you that kid? Who taught you that? Well, I learned it out of training or learned that from so-and-so in the training source. He goes, that's not how you do it. Let me show you how to do it. He boom, boom, knock it out. Because what else you got to go, well, when I'm done this and I say that, he goes, who taught you that? He was real aggressive like that, right? I'm like on, you know, who I want to know? Tell me who he was. Yeah, fix that. Who told you that? I'm like, so-and-so. They probably hate me. He's like, no, kid, that's not what you do. And he started to mentor me. He started to teach me. And I never made over $3,000 in a month ever. And I was in the company for three years. Three years. I worked with him for less than 90 days and I was making over 20 grand a month. 90 days. Wow. I went from barely doing enough volume to rent a desk in an office space to be at a shared training center to where I opened up four of my own offices in five months. But you shouldn't have a mentor nowadays. You don't need one. Sure, I guess, and he taught me key principles about you can't get excited about the highs and you can't get depressed about the lows. He taught me that making mistakes, you talk about the school system, it's minus this and minus that, minus this, minus that, minus this and minus that. I mean, are you not programmed that when you make a mistake, it takes away from? Yeah. And so you get involved in business and the only way to have success is to go out there and make mistakes. You gotta make a bunch. Because, yeah, and that's what he said to me. He goes, if I told you it took 10,000 mistakes, you had to make 10,000 mistakes before you can make 10,000 a month. How fast would you do it, kid? So I do it right away. So we get busy then. And he talked about my attitude, right? He's like, you know, the key to having that success is people are always riding that roller coaster up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. He said, you know, successful people have a consistent attitude even when they're failing. And Marlin Faulkner, and it gives me the chills because that changed my life and I shared that with Marlin. And Marlin was one of the, what makes him different? Which you asked that question. I always come back. I remember these things. I sometimes take a little bit of a detour among ways instead of Apple. Is that what it's called? Ways to take a detour. Is that Marlin was able to have an attitude, positive attitude and an attitude of success even while he was failing. We do a thing called Marlin the Untold Story. And when you watch it, I would love to do that sometime. For any insurance agent, if you watch Marlin the Untold Story and you saw where he came from and you heard his story and you watched what he went through, everyone would love him a hundred times more than where you love him because that guy persevered through some of the toughest crap that I've ever seen someone persevere through. And so learning those lessons, I'll never forget he did a lot of these things to me but it changed who I was. And we were sitting in his office and he took out a piece of paper and he drew on the piece of paper and he said, I don't wanna push you, put my fingers on here, right? He's like, down here's poverty and he drew a little circle. Here's poverty, right? And he goes, and here's average. He drew a circle in the middle of the paper. And he goes, showing where wealth is and he hands me the pencil. I was like, I got this one. This is obvious. Like, cause he always asks these questions that seemed obvious and you never get the answer right and then he realized how stupid you really were. I'm like, I got this one. He's in trouble this time and I grabbed that pencil, right? There you go. It's easy, right on the top. You all right? Is that what you would put? That's what you guys put? Totally. That's your problem, kid. How can you get wealthy if you don't even know where it's at? And he goes, and that's what everybody else thinks. The good news is, it's right here and he took his pencil and he drew it that far about the dot. And he goes, that's wealth. It's just doing a little bit more than the average person does. It's making an extra phone call the average person won't. It's showing up when the average person won't. It's just doing this much more. You can create wealth, he said, because most people are doing just enough to get by. And that was the first time in my life I thought I can really get wealthy. Wow. Because you think you have to be that much better. That much better looking, that much better in speaking, that much better or that much smarter. And that was a pivotal point in my life where I just went, wow, like I just have to be this much better. I just gotta get up one hour earlier, not six. Right? I just gotta stay at the office one hour later. I gotta be able to recruit one more person than that person and just do it just a little bit more than the average and I can have wealth. What was the turning point for you from 3K? And I know it was over 90 days. The mentor was a big help. And I wanna fast forward through marketing and get to the insurance here pretty soon too. But what was the turning point for you from 3K a month to 20K a month, 90 days later? Like literally seven X income in three months. What was the things I learned from my mentor? Which I can't sit here and talk about all the whole entire thing, but if you broke it down, it was the attitude, skills, and the mentality of it. Really? You know, one of the things I talk about so much about that personality thing is that's one of the things that he taught me. I mean, for me, it's invaluable. I mean, I get it, you go and you, you know, I can't go to a networking event and hand someone six car, four cars from the disc profile and say, arrange them in the order that you think they should be arranged in. And I can tell you how I can, that's weird. I can't go to someone I meet and go, hey, will you take this test so I can know if you're ENTP or ESTJ or, you know, I took it, I took the class two times, they still couldn't figure out what I was. Yeah. Are you a P or are you a T or an S? I was like, I spent an intensive, like an eight hour day, one day, an eight hour day. Another way, so if I couldn't figure out in a class, going 16 hours, what exactly my fourth quadrant numbers are, how the heck are you gonna meet someone on the street and figure out that personality? And it's not like I had this deep dive where it's, okay, I can figure out how you want to have information delivered to you. Yeah. In that way, you can receive it in the most receptive way. How powerful is that in terms of selling? Yep. How powerful that in terms of recruiting? Yep. How powerful that in terms of a relationship? When I went through and really got that, when people go through that, it's like two hours, you teach it in two hours, two hours you can teach it. They go through that and they're like, my marriage is better, I raise my kids differently because you can immediately just go, that's how they respond, right? And it's not something that's new, it's something that he was able to teach in a manner in fact to where you didn't have to sit down and give someone a test or have a range card to figure that out, so that was huge. But by knowing those, we run our whole company differently, once someone let me in on that and I started diving in and doing it myself and realizing that my engineers receive information differently and that my engineers don't wanna be touched but I'm touching them all the time because you know what I mean, little stuff like that, it's like, that stuff matters. But I didn't, that was something that I didn't even know till probably like last year and it's crazy. And there's deep dives and I'm not saying that, disc is great, it's a deep dive and the Myers Briggs, a deep dive or the five voices for leadership, I read that book, it's a deep dive. So learning that stuff was huge and being able to do it on the fly like instantly and then be able to take all that other stuff later on to get a real deep dive and give assessments and stuff, that's major. Especially today, especially today because we live in a society where everyone has a voice, everyone has an opinion, everyone feels like that opinion should matter in reality if it does or doesn't, we'll just stop there on social media. It's giving everyone a platform to be an expert on something they're not an expert on and they feel like they can voice an opinion and then they get upset if someone else doesn't agree with their opinion, okay? I always say that I'm not gonna have a 300 pound fat person teach me how to lose weight. Just like I'm not gonna have you tell me how to dunk a basketball or can you dunk? You used to be able to. Okay, well maybe I would then see. I know you're good at basketball but I was gonna say I dunk a basketball or I'm not gonna ask somebody who, you know, whatever. There's one question that I've been wanting to ask. Oh, so this is the question you had that you wanted to ask, there's one question. Yeah, there's one thing. Get ready for it. Well dude, when you look at what you've accomplished in the industry and how fast you did it, the money you're making now and only being an insurance for five or six years is insane. Tubsert, it's overwhelming sometimes to think that you could do that in six years. Yeah, it is, but that's not the question. Right. The question is, how did you jump into insurance? With no insurance experience and some people think it's more about the insurance experience, obviously it's not. What was so special about you that you could jump into our industry and pull off $85,000 in premium in your first six weeks? Most people don't do that in six months let alone six years. Most people are failing. You don't even know how to spell insurance. You still have probably very little product knowledge compared to most people and you do 85K in six weeks. Well, I'm the dumbest insurance guy I ever meet, I'll tell you right now. I know very little about the insurance industry and not saying I got my license, some licenses sell it. I understand what a term product is and the difference between that and the whole life. That's a good start. That's a good start, but other than that I'm probably the dumbest insurance guy you're gonna meet. I was talking to your sales team about that this morning. I always say I'm a 20 year overnight success. And it was just the foundation I was able to build and the understanding of people. And it was so exciting, I got to reconnect with my mentor here recently. And it was the universe, God, whatever you wanna call it I'm gonna force any beliefs on you, but I had a chance to reconnect with him and go have lunch with him and he lives a mile down from my street. I live here in a gated community and he lives in the, I'm like in a mini gated community. You've been to the house. That's the mini one compared to Francisco where his house right by the Dallas star and lives in Starwood with all the elite athletes and the big ballers and the money makers and he's doing phenomenal. And just to reconnect with him it was like, I left that meeting we had an hour lunch that we had and I think it was like three and a half, four hours of us talking and I just felt another higher level and I'm like, oh, I got more stuff I want to get from him and get a chance and he's so busy and we went to the country club the next day and he's the member. I mean, here's my mentor. He met when I was broke and I was literally jumping from one couch to another friend's couch and then have somewhere to live and we got my car repoed and we're going to lunch at the country club. He's the same member of the same country club I'm a member of down the road and you know, and since you brought it up and you love to talk to me because of my Facebook, my McLaren's not there my house isn't on there. I don't know. No offense. I don't need people to tell me that I have a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, beautiful car to make myself feel good about myself because that was another thing he taught me is don't let your stuff define you. Right? Because I watched him because of some things that happened he lost a lot of his stuff at one point in his life because of some people that he trained that did some things that they shouldn't have done and he lost a lot of stuff and he, no big deal. I remember asking him like, man, like that would crush me. There's no big deal. It's just stuff, you know? Never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You can always buy it back, right? You can always buy it back. That's right. And you're not going to want it in eight or nine years anyway. He's like, you ever going on a good vacation? I'm like, no. He's like, you ever been to like a really nice vacation? I'm at the time, I was like, no. Now the insurance industry, you know, they, you know, try to outdo each other. We've been to, you know, the Ritz-Carlton and Kauai and the Ritz-Carlton and Maui and we went to the Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Puerto Rico and been to Ireland and London and Rome and Italy and, you know, Estonia and Russia and Finland. I mean, I don't know, I can't count how many vacations we've been on because of this incredible industry and the carriers and what they do to take care of us. Right? But he's like, oh, you ever been on a good vacation? So, no, he's like, you know, you get there. You know, he starts describing his vacations. And he's like, you know, it's like, and then I went on one time, we had a button. You pushed a button where the Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Puerto Rico and had a button where you pushed it and your button would come running. Where were you at? You carried a button around with you. That was cool. Right? I think some people abused it. I felt bad though, like, kind of felt bad. Like, I'm like, you know, I get out of the car and like, they're like, oh, take this. I'm like, I carry my luggage where I go still. I'm the same dude that was, I waited tables. You know, I'm the same dude that was a college draft out of the way of tables. It's like, I got my bag, even you try and grab my bag. I got it. I was still weird, like, you know. No, but I didn't give it back though. I know you didn't give it back. But I'm like, I feel like- No dude, I got this. It's almost weird when you go on these vacations and they just like slobber all over you, right? Yeah. But he said, you ever go on a vacation and you know, you have the nicest room and you have a butler taking care of you and you're, you know, right on the beach and you know, you're in this room and it costs you $5,000 a night. No, he's like, what'd it be? So when you're done that vacation and you get on the airplane, you're going home. Are you like in tears, crying? Oh my gosh, I don't have my thing. Are you just thinking about all the wonderful things you got to experience? And what are you just talking about when you get home? What are you talking about? Yeah, all the positive stuff. All the positive stuff. Yeah. He goes, so he goes, that's life, dude. That's life, you know? That's your stuff. It's on rent. You don't have to keep it. And so like that was another critical point. I never fell in love. Do I like nice stuff? Of course I like nice stuff. Do I want to lose my nice stuff? Of course I don't want to lose my nice stuff, but I never really fell in love with it. And when, you know, when you don't fall in love with your stuff, you have the ability to take risk without worry. Because you're not in love with your stuff, right? So here I am. I got involved in credit card processing and I made millions of dollars in credit card processing based on the stuff that I learned from my mentor. And you know, some things happened where I had to walk away from that, you know? And I had a, you know, $20,000 a month lifestyle with a $40,000 a month income I wasn't making anymore. And I was trying to build another business and I thought, well, maybe the network marketing industry's changed. I tried to get back into that and I was doing well, but I just wasn't really in love with it again. I was like, oh, I don't want to go back here. And I actually called two individuals, Matt and Brad Smith, with the company. And I attempted to recruit them into a company I was doing and they flipped the script. So here they are. And I'm like, oh, so what are you guys doing, man? It's like, you guys see what we're doing. I'm like, what are you doing? Right? And they go, we're selling insurance. And you're like, mortgage protection. Yes. No, no, it was bad. I had a little bit, you know, you got it. I worked up to my life where I had three assistants. I was, I wasn't married at the time. I was 38 years old and living the bachelor life with the, you know, home theater room in the basement with the 120 inch screen, you know, projector and flat screens all around. And I'd be, you know, so here I am. We're getting up, you know, starting work at 10 a.m. Getting done at four all nights and weekends free. Right? I was used to, you know, yeah. That's why I used to make a great income and you don't have a family. I mean, that's your, you're living like a king, especially I was in Ohio back then. What kind of money? I was making $40,000 a month, $34,000 a month. This is before insurance. That was before insurance. Okay. All right. So I mean, millions of dollars in the industry. So they said they're selling mortgage protection. I go, Brad, is life that bad? Did you say that? I did say that to him. I'm surprised, you know, Brad's such a nice guy. I'm surprised he wouldn't reach into the phone. Like, screw you. And he just turned that over the phone? Yeah, it was over the phone. Life that bad? And he starts telling me about this, that and the other. And I'm like, man, I'm just like, that's great. I'm not interested. Right? And so then I said, but I have about 10 guys that I will send your way. They aren't going to cut it with what I'm doing. Marlon was one of them. Mmm. And I sent out a video. You heard a story, the 10 of those guys. I thought of Marlon. I said, all right. I know he's got it in him. Here's a chance, send him a video. Nine out of 10 came back and they said, we have an interest. And I'm like, OK. I know how these pyramid deals work, right? You're like, I don't want to jump in after they do. Yeah, I said insurance, man. That's a pyramid deal, right? It's the best one. See, insurance is such a great pyramid deal, right? That you need a license to participate in that one. That's right. I say that with Jess because the ignorant people say dumb stuff, right? Oh, it's a pyramid. OK, great. We can spend an hour on that one. Watch the podcast we did earlier today. I annihilate that one, right? Yeah, that's true. I annihilate that one. Yeah, they want you to start the bottom of someone else's pyramid and try to climb the corporate ladder while someone's standing on your head. I mean, how smart is that? Fill out your resume and resume with the bottom of someone else's corporation that they busted their ass to build. And then one day, maybe, if you had the right last name or the right opportunity, you might get to move up and they pay you just enough money that you stay there and you work just hard enough that they don't fire you. I mean, what a great corporate America, man. That's where I want to be. Absolutely. I mean, my dad worked for the same company for 40-plus years. That doesn't happen anymore. Downsized, resized, restructured. I met a guy the other day I was recruiting. He said he got strategically realigned, right into Zip Recruiter. You lost your job, buddy, right? I got strategically realigned. That's a good one. That's a good one, right? Strategically realigned. Well, you got fired or you lost your job? Who was in on that point? You said that, didn't you? What? I said, yeah. So you mean, you don't have a job right now? Or like, I said, what does strategically realign mean? So I called Renigo. How am I going to? I'm at the Red Cross here, man. How am I going to get in on this little deal, right? I want to be able to get involved. I want to be on top. I want to make this money on these guys. I'll send you people. You pay me. He's like, well, it's a regulated industry. It really doesn't work that way. I said, what do I got to do? He's like, you need to get your insurance license. I mean, a whole wave of school. I hated school. I just didn't like it. I hated it. I just didn't like it. Here we go. So I went and back then it was licensed coach. If you ever took licensed coach, I wanted to punch coach Jenny right in the throat, because I was just so annoyed by this guy. He makes it real easy. 20 hour course online. I'm like, oh my God. Did you pass your first time? Yeah, I got my license in four days. I felt twice. Oh, you did? Yeah. I felt twice. That makes you feel better. Dude, you're smarter than me. No, I had the ability to memorize and retain for a short period of time. Well, you did it for four days, so that's good. Well, I knew my weakness. I knew it. If I would have studied over three weeks, I would have forgot the first chapter three weeks in. That's funny. I mean, like, yeah, I was like, I had to crush this thing and do it in four days. So I got my license, and I thought that was the end of it, right? And I'm still doing my other stuff, and Brad goes, well, can you do a conference call for your guys? I said, about what? He's like, well, you know, you're working with your mentor and stuff that you learn, and you motivate people. Because at this point in time, I'd spent 10 years doing that. And I was good at doing it, building sales teams, built sales teams in the credit card processing business. And it was amazing because the same stuff he taught me in the network, Marty made millions of dollars. He's the same stuff in the credit card processing made millions of dollars, and then transformed into the insurance business and made millions of dollars. People are people. That's right. So I thought, and this is just me, and if you do this, I don't want to push anyone back there, but I just don't believe in trying to teach you if someone to do something I haven't done. I mean, because a lot of people, right, you know? There's a lot of that going on nowadays, too, man. Hey, you know what? There's a lot of that. You can't do it, write a book about it. There you go, there you go. If you can't do it, teach it. If you can't teach it, write a book about it, right? That's good. If you can't do it, but if you are doing it, and you teach it, write a book, then kudos, if you haven't done it. How in the world can you teach someone to do something you haven't done? I can teach them success principles, but you can read that in any book and go to any podcast. You can listen to all sorts of success principles. But I never listed a house in MLS. If I never did this, if I never did that, like how in the world am I going to teach them to do it? So I said, Brad, I'm not going to go and try to motivate these guys to do something I never did. Yeah. And he goes, well, why don't you just go, this scene was good, you know the story right here. And he goes, well, why don't you just get some leads and go into the field? I said, because I don't want to. He's like, unless you think you can't. Dude, that's all you got to tell me too, bro. That's all you got to tell me is I can't. I said, fine, who's your top guy? Right? He turned that, he activated my prey drive. That's right. Coach Burke calls the prey drive. He activated my prey drive. I went, all right, who's your top guy? What are they doing? And so I got some leads and I was horrific on the phone. Well, they gave you a script though, right? Yeah, but I was horrific on the phone because I talk fast. I move fast. You know, I'm like this, right? So I'm like, hey, how are you doing? I'm just his name calling you back. I had bonus leads. I bought $3 leads. So you didn't slow down on all the phone? I was the same as I always thought I was. I was talking to business owners. What do they want? They went quick to the point and make it quick or you don't have their attention. I bought 70 leads. So I spent like $500, $550 on 70 aged leads, I guess you call them. We call them bonus leads and $2, $1. That's a better way of putting it. Bonus leads, yeah. Because they've already worked. Somebody's worked two or three or four times, some one time, two times. And I call through 70 of them and booked three appointments. I'm gonna call through 70 of them like one time. I double dialed, triple dialed, called from different phone numbers. I got a hold of probably 45 of those and booked three appointments. Oh my. Right. So I called Brad up and my first question was, can I buy one more leads? And he goes, why? I said, because I suck on the phone. I know it's eventually gonna get better. And we roll play on the phone and then I got back on the phone and I booked six more appointments. Like in two hours. He's like, dude, you gotta slow down. I'm in Texas too, right? One lady on the phone, she's like, sir, could you slow down please? I'm like, oh my God. So dialing has never been exciting for me. I don't like to dial. No, but now you're really good on the phone. Yeah, but I wanna shoot myself when I'm on it sometimes. You're good. I'm with you. Low and slow was the key, right? Low and slow. Low, slow and controlled, right? Right. And so, again, I, you know, you build me up this great guide. I mean, because of the support structure and if you're in the insurance industry, it's important to have mentors and have a good support structure. I was an overpaid Uber driver. And what I mean by that, I went from one appointment to an next appointment and I literally had five people. I had Matt, Brad, Edward, Paul Honeycut, another person on speed dial. And I literally would call from the home. Now I wanna suggest that because you wanna learn some stuff but I need to make money right away, right? And I had 30 people I recruited in licensing before I got my license. Marlon was already licensed. We started producing people. We took those nine people. I took the things that I learned about recruiting, which we're gonna talk about on a webinar later tonight. And I took that, that was nine people, turned it into 30 and eventually turned it into 69. So I had 30 people on licensing and I had backed myself in a corner which I talked about earlier, which is key. I couldn't afford not to make it work. Yeah, yeah. Because now I had 30 eyes on me. I had 30 people look at me like, what's Nate gonna do? I had Marlon Faulkner looking at me going, what's Nate gonna do? And my ego, which this is where it's healthy, goes, I ain't gonna fail. I know that. That's right. So can I buy more leads? You know? And so like I literally, I mean I wrote $15,000 in APV my first week, but like it wasn't cause I'm impressive. It's just, I knew people and I was dumb. Did you even know how to run an appointment? No, I mean they have a script and they had a, you know, I went to their due to boot camp and they taught me so yeah, I mean I knew how to run the appointment but I just didn't, I mean I was clueless. They had paper applications. I remember I called Brad from the home one time and I'm sitting there and I had this whole thing down where I'd say, hey listen, you know, we work with 35 different carriers. We have access to foreigner products. It's impossible for me to keep up with all the different changes they made. I mean, it looks like they just changed the application. They're trying to make this easier on us, you know, and it's actually harder. So let me, I have a good friend of mine is in the marketing department. Let me just call him real quick. He gave me a cell number. I just wanna make sure I don't write the wrong thing down cause I don't think you want me to come back to the house and get another signature from you guys, right? Okay, great. So I'm on the phone like, hey, you know, brought him sitting here with Sally and Bob and that wasn't their names, but. And we're gonna eat their address. There's a line right here. I just wanna make sure it's there. So security and where he there says DL. What do I put there? And he goes, driver's license is my first appointment. Swear, swear. I said, yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. Okay, great. That's what I thought. Hey, thanks Brad, appreciate it. And I skipped to the next line and I came back cause I felt so dumb. Yeah, you didn't wanna just drive. I go, hey, can I have your driver's license please? They're gonna be like, dude, this guy's an idiot. And so it was just massive. I was taught massive action, constant correction, massive action, constant correction. And then that's what the company taught me. And then they also, my mentor in my back in the year, if you had to go out and make $10,000. And I said, you had to make 10,000 mistakes before you make $10,000. How quickly would you make them? So I was that guy, light yourself up fire and people will come watch you burn. So I mean, it was just hustling and getting on the phone and making sure I had the appointments. And a lot of people work two or three days a week in the field. That's great. I was working, I was working six, seven days. Whenever I could get an appointment, I was running it cause I needed to make money. And I wanted to be at a point where I could make that money. Did you still work at your other job as well? It wasn't a job. I mean, career or whatever, but yeah. Did you stay? After my first, I mean, when I had $40,000 to pause in my bank account within two weeks, I pretty much just, that was gone. Yeah. I mean, I still kind of had some customers and stuff. But I mean, it was like, I was like, here's an opportunity. Do you still make money from that? No, it's very rough. It's very tough to, these days with the different things to be able to continue to make money on it and stuff. But 85K in six weeks. And you didn't even know what DL meant on an application. Well, I can't help that was dumb, but you know what I'm saying. Hey, there's hope. There's hope, right? There's definitely hope. But I had a good support team around me and a great company I was working with and great resources and I turned my car into a rolling university. Another thing I learned from my mentor where it was like when I was on a way to an appointment, I was listening to, here's what I learned. They said, you know, successful. And this is what's so funny. You don't have to be smart to be successful. You just gotta be a good cheater. And I don't mean that in a negative way. You just gotta find someone who's having success. And if the words, what's that movie? I can't hear the words coming out of your mouth. But if the words that come out of your mouth and the words that come out of the mouth of the person that's successful, like I've never cold called. And don't put me up this, I don't wanna do it. But I know you do cold call trainings. I firmly believe if I studied you and listened to you and had your script on cold call training, I listened to you over and over and over again. And the words that you say come out of my mouth that I could book appointments dialing through a list like you do on cold call. A phone book. You literally could. I could if I was disciplined to do it. And so like there wasn't any more TV. There wasn't any more golf. There wasn't any more football. I didn't watch football for three and a half years and football is my favorite sport. But it's like I wanted to have the success that I wanted to have and I was willing to give up the things that were important to me to get the success that I wanted to have. And then so many people are not willing to do that. And that's why I truly believe I won't reach those higher levels because they don't wanna give up what they have to get what they want. You think you can train anyone to make a quarter meal, half a million bucks a year, don't you? Anyone know? Anyone who wants to and has commitment? Yes. And that's the big difference. That's good. That's good. Not anyone. That's good because I set you up to agree with me but I like that you're like, dude, they don't want you, I can't. I can't train someone that doesn't have a commitment and the commitment. And what's exciting is that we at 8% Nation, which is how I first met you the first time I went there and again this year, we're bringing our team. So what we're super excited about, we got the suites, the team suites. So we got the two team suites filled up. Sorry, we got those. And then a whole team seating area below. So we have probably about 80 to 100 people coming and that's before we were really aggressively promoting it. At least. Because we had a company event that was coming up on a cruise ship, which of course now Corona's knocked us out. And we promote from event to event, right? So we were waiting till that event so we could push that event to get more people and become to be involved to hear, you know, Jordan Belford and Marshall Silver, Bert, Coach Michael Burt, Remiz, I mean, you have all these high caliber people and the next day we're doing a SWAT event, the one day event, which I hope you can come to. Dude, totally. We're gonna do a one day event on Sunday. I'm probably speaking at it. Yeah, I would love for you, Coach Bert, to speak at it, but you know, Marlon's gonna be there, which is pretty awesome. Yes. So there's the people and I'll be more than happy. We haven't talked about this. I'll be more than happy to open that up. We'll put some details in the comments below, we'll have to get a bigger room because we already have like a hundred people. We can figure it out. That's true. But I'll be more than happy to open it up the following day on Sunday if people want to stick around. It's a good training, man. And we're gonna cover, well, we're gonna cover those how to identify someone in... You didn't think I would actually sit through the SWAT training in Dallas? I didn't think you would. Because I spoke at it, but I actually sat through the whole thing. You did. It was great. Yeah. I love it. Like events, getting around big time people, listening, like learning, something about events. Events have changed my life. And I don't think a lot of people can say that. That's the one big reason we do 8%. It does. It's life changing because you're around those people. Well, and you talk about being around people, we met over the phone about a year ago, maybe a little less, about a year ago. You bought front row tickets at 8% last year. We've gotten to know each other really well. Now you're speaking at 8% Nation 2020. You're not only sitting here. You're the cat of the day. I'm letting the cat of the bag. I mean, think about that. Like that's, most people don't pay to be on the front row. They don't like pay to get around people. They don't fly up to Springfield and just move into my house for a couple of days because they want to, you know what I mean? Like people don't like go get what they want like you do. And I just love that like that is your, cause we're very alike, but we're very different. And a lot of things that we have in common is, and you know, I'm assuming I'm probably better closer than you, but I know that. Of course you are. I know that. We could do that too. We can have like a throw up checks and we can go back and close that. We can have like a, the Closer School. There we go. That'd be fun, right? Closer, so. We got to bring Bradley on there. There you go. There you go. But you just go for stuff, man. Like when you want something, nothing gets in your way. And that's the one thing that separates a 92% from the 8% in our industry is, Cardona always says if you don't quit, you can't fail. Yup. I don't want to quit. You don't want to quit. Marla now doesn't want to quit. The people speaking at 8% don't want to quit. You know, the people buying fire tickets won't quit because of the amount of freaking money they're investing in how serious they are. Most people just don't, they're not serious, man. Yeah. And that's what we talked about this morning too, is backing yourself in the corner. So I bought those tickets to have to be able to chance a network with you, right? I know we're going over here, so we need to end this off. It'll be like the marathon interview that no one's gonna watch, right? But that next day on Sunday, having you potentially there, hopefully you'll be there, and Coach Burt and being able to have Marlon Faulkner, and he's amazing. And we're gonna go through that two hour training on how to identify those people, as well as we're gonna do some incredible things in terms of goal setting and what the real difference between a goal and commitment is. We're not gonna be sitting there and setting all these, you know, goals and not the smart goals are bad at all, but he also took me through a way, which I was talking with you about the other day, that, and I wish I would have brought my cards because I have these blue cards that I write down because they're a friendlier to the subconscious mind and he did a blueprinting your life. It was like an hour exercise where it's just crazy because I'll read them in the morning, I'll read them at night, and every one of those blue cards that I've written down meeting you was on a blue card, being friends with you, and I wish I would have had it because I would have read it. Josh, that'd have been freaking cool. You know, I've been read it where it said, you know, I was taught to write it in the present tense and it said, I enjoy the relationship that I've developed with Cody Askin in 2020. I love the fact that we have not only friends, but we're doing big things together to impact an insurance agent across the country. My life is better because of the people that are in it, including Cody Askins. And I read it every morning, every night, because I was told, hey, the best time to program your subconscious mind is when you wake up in the morning before you go to bed. And I have physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, right? And we're gonna talk about that next day as well. And that was another huge game changer in my life because it was like, you know, it's tough to have a good physical life if your finances aren't in order. Because when you shop a whole foods, it's more expensive when you go down to Target or Walmart, you know, the quality of your education your kids get is, you know, number one cause of divorce, money. Second cause of divorce, children. Yeah. So I was taught to have your finances get that game out of the way so you can do what really is more important in life, which is the rest of it, right? And so it's just, you know, I feel so blessed to, you know, number one to have you in my life and just, you know, you introduced me to some incredible people and now they're my best friends and, you know, Coach Bert, he's coaching me as well. It just, you know, it's surreal. It's like you want to pinch yourself, but I don't know about with you. It was like, I knew I could get there. I just don't know how. And then, and one of the things I realized too is that, you know, success is a journey, not a destination. You'll hear a lot of people talk about that. People go, yeah, sure, whatever. It's not like you wake up in the morning and just have a nice car and I'm successful now. I don't feel successful. Successful will never do. I don't feel successful. I mean, cause you're always, you know, you're this little P in this vast ocean. And when you look at some of these other people, it's like, I don't feel successful, but I do feel fulfilled. And I think that's what true success is. Like if I died tomorrow, I would leave this planet with no regrets. That's awesome. With no regrets. Cause I feel fulfilled. Like I want so much more and I want to impact so many people more, but like it's not about the money. No, we talked about money is literally a scoreboard. We talked about in the car today. Because I don't, I don't even know how much money I make. Like it's not, that's not why I do what I do. Most people think I make a lot more money than I actually probably even do. Yeah, we like to talk about everyone else's money. Yes. Yeah, we do. We do. And for me it's like, it's more about the impact. We talked about that. It is. But it's money is, it ends up being the scoreboard that we play on. And because I'm a competitive individual, it's just part of the game, dude. You know, it's just part of the game. But for that agent out there that's watching right now. Well, one last question. Unbelievable, dude. Like this dude is a freaking powerhouse. If you don't come to Apersonation 2020 and see him speak, I swear to you you will regret it for the rest of your life. And come the next day. And come the next day. For Sunday, you'll have eight hours of just, you'll leave there, fire, it'll be awesome. Crazy good. But you might have to limit it because of how many people are going to do it. Well, they got to reach out to you and get registered. We'll put in the comments and we'll give a spot where they can get registered for it and link it up. That'll be awesome. For a new person struggling, the Marlin Faulkner. Right. That's sitting there watching right now. Right. That's like he was, and they've been struggling. They've never found success. They want it. They actually want it. They never found it. They shared what to do, what to say, where to get it, how to do it. What are you going to say to them? I would say the second thing that Marlin got really good at because I would preach it day in, day out, day in, day out was how to follow through with a commitment. And you'll hear me talk about that a lot because goal setting, hear that, you're like, oh, I sent my goals. And goals is nothing more than a wish list that never gets accomplished. Forbes and Inc. 5000, they talk about 86% of the people that have never accomplished their goals. And I was talking about, I did credit card processing, and I had a client of mine who had a gym. And I was looking through his ACHs. They called ACHs. They direct their account each month. And I was like, how in the world do you fit all this? How naive I was. How many people, how do you fit all those people in your gym? Because I don't work out, obviously. And he's like, what do you mean? I said, do you have like 2,700 ACHs? Like, you only have like a 6,000 or 10,000. I don't know what it was. Square foot building, he just laughed. He goes, they don't all come to the gym, mate. I mean, I said it once. He goes, no, they don't all come to the gym at all. I said, what? And they're charging their card every month? He's like, yeah, it's like in January, they had this big uptick. And by May, it trickles down to where there's maybe about five or six new full-time people we have at the gym. And then during the spring, it picks back up again because they want their summer bodies. And after the summer, it trickles down to about the same. Maybe extra three or four more people. I was like, so what percentage out of those 2,700 people do you think actually consistently come to the gym? And he goes, three to five. Out of 2,700? Three to five percent. Percent. Three to five percent. But you say, wow. And I thought, well, look at the book, Think and Grow Rich talks about that 97% of people will retire on family, friends, and the federal government. And only 3% of people will ever achieve financial independence. To me, it's great to have a goal, but without a commitment. It's hard to really achieve or impossible, in my opinion, achieve what you want. And see, if you look up in Webster, whoever Webster is, I don't know why we all agree with Webster. Mr. Webster or Mrs. Webster? I don't know. Webster, Webster Dictionary. Who wrote Webster? Who decides what something means? But anyway, that's always kind of one of that. Who's Webster? Anyway, a commitment is a pledge. Pledge, pledge, cut your hand, pledge, pinky promise. Pledge to do something, right? Or it's a state, a state, body, soul, a state, right? A being bound emotionally or intellectually to an idea, an ideal, or an event that you are going to do no matter what. That is a commitment. And see, a commitment in the NIV version, the Nate international version, is when I make a commitment, I give up the ability to do what I want until I get done what I committed to. Right? I'll say it again, I give up the ability or the choice to do what I want until I have followed through with what I committed to. Exactly. I mean, you can have the nicest car with the nicest engine, and a commitment's like your transmission. You know the transmission ain't going to go anywhere. It doesn't go anywhere. Most people don't actually commit all the way. Oh, I mean, and people want it both ways. They want you to commit. Can you imagine your staff? I mean, this huge staff of people, right? And I was talking to your sales team about this today, but like, if the roles were flipped, everyone wants you to commit, right? Can you imagine if they came in on Friday, you know, and they show up, and they're expecting their paycheck, and they don't have it? And they go, Cody, what happened? Oh, man, I had a little bit too much drink last night, and sorry about that. We'll try to get out Monday or Tuesday. Are you kidding me? Yeah, they'd walk out. They'd flip the lid. They'd walk out. They would leave. It'd be over, right? Or you run a sales contest, like you did the 10X Grant Cardone or the NBA Finals, which they're probably not going to have now because of the coronavirus at this time of the filming, or you're the major league baseball thing, whatever it is, you run this contest, and they're working hard, and they're working late, and everything else, and you know, you had to leave the office, and Rodney calls you up, or Tucker calls you up, and says, hey, man, I'm like 2,000 away from winning this contest, and I really want to do it. I'm a huge basketball fan. I'm taking my son, you know, we're going to do it. You know, can you come back? I got to jump out and run home for dinner, but I want to come back, because I know I can probably reach the people from seven to nine. Can you leave the office unlocked for me? And you go, sure, you know, no problem. I'll come back and unlock it. You know, and there he is. He's like two sales away. He's been working 90 days. He's at the door, pulling the door, the door's locked. He's calling your phone, calling your phone, answering the phone, calling your phone, and you don't answer, right? And he misses it. He disappoints his boy, he comes in. Cody, what happened, man? You know, I got my throat, you know, I was a little cough. I just wasn't feeling well, man. I'm sorry, I turned my phone off. You know, I'll run another contest. Don't worry about it. Like, how would that play off? Not good. But flip the script, right? It's okay, I don't shrug today. It's okay, I don't do my dials. It's okay, I didn't have enough appointments. It's okay, I didn't commit to my thing. So in my organization, when you ask how I run, it's you make a goal and commitment. And I work with, I think Landon asked me today, he said, how do you motivate your team? I don't motivate my team. I work with people who follow through with commitments because they're the only ones that deserve my time. A mentor always said, work where you deserve, Nate, not where you need them. And you don't have to play the commitment game, but if you make a goal and commitment and you want to be held accountable, because you've got to be held accountable. Accountability is one of the number one ingredients of success. And it's like rain, right? Everyone knows they need it, but they don't want it. That's right. When it's their birthday. That's why we started Success Society. Right. Weekly accountability. There you go. Everyone loves rain. They don't want it if it's their church picnic. They want it when it's convenient for them. Well, another thing I learned from mentors, success will never be convenient. So you got to have a commitment and it's your integrity and you have to follow through. I mean, if you or me and I were you, right? And you were moving and I said, hey, I'll help you move. Yeah. And you're loading up a moving truck and on Friday you call me up and say, oh yeah, I mean, I'm so sorry, I forgot about it. I'd love to come over here. But my wife, you know, we had dinner plans, she didn't tell me, no big deal. But hey, I promise I'll be here tomorrow morning. Cause it's a three day move, right? I'll be here tomorrow morning, 10 a.m. sharp. No, no, no holds bar. I'm like, okay, great. It sucks. They're doing it all by themselves. The next day of the morning you're not there. Right? Or you shove it 11 or you shove it 12. Oh, what happened? All my kids soccer game. I mean, it only takes two or three times before you start losing faith in that person. No doubt. You're going to go, what they say, I can't count on. And what's that? That's, that's our, that's my integrity. Yeah, that's my word. And I'm not going to sacrifice that. And that's why you'll hear when I make commitments, you know, I always say them out loud. I'm committed to do this. I'll tell people the commitment. And, and I love what Ed Milet says because he said, you know, there's a way to develop said self-confidence. It's by keeping promises to one's self. And there's a magic in that because you're either building your self-confidence or you're destroying it. And, and that promise and that commitment, no matter how small it is, I was talking to your sales guy and one of them felt a little bit, you know, how's your kidney going? I said, your commitment doesn't have to be a sale. Maybe your commitment today is, I'm going to dial until I talk to 25 people. Yeah. And tomorrow I make that commitment, I'm going to dial until I talk to 30 people. Start with something you have control over that you know, because you can, you can dial until you get the phone to 20 people. No doubt. Absolutely. Even cold calling. Start that and go from there. And so that, that is what Marlon got really good at too, as well as when he started to get set a goal, but he also made a commitment and he'd follow through that with that commitment. And that would be another underlining thing, if you call it success, that I would probably give credit to for having any of the successes I've had is being able to really attach my integrity as my commitment. And I'm going to do whatever it takes, no matter what, no matter how, unless I'm laid up in a hospital somewhere, which I would pay someone to follow through on that commitment. There you go. And if you talk to anyone I work with or anybody I've been around or any of my business partners, the one thing I'm proud that they'll say about me is like Nate will do what he says he's going to do. That's big dude. And I'll make a commitment unless I know I can do it. No doubt about it. You've asked me to do a couple of things that I don't make a promise I can't keep. Yeah. I'll do my best, but I'm not making a commitment. And that's huge. And the more and more I'm around successful people, the majority, if not all, when they make a commitment they follow through. Yes, they do. I hope you guys follow through after listening to this, dude. Thank you, buddy. Awesome job, bro. No, thank you. Thank you, man. I appreciate it, man. It's only gonna get better. He's gonna be speaking at 8% in 2020. Dude from literally no insurance experience to 85K in six weeks, recruiting 69 in 60 days. You gotta see this with 8%. Thanks for watching another episode of Insurance Influencers. This dude, Mr. Nate Offert is an insurance influencer. Go check him out, add him on Facebook. We're gonna get his personal brand blown up. He's gonna be all over the place. Don't be surprised by my last post when I got married seven years ago, but Cody's gonna work on that format, I guess. Thank you, man. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to watch and listen. And hopefully there is, if I can have an impact on just one of you that my mentor had an impact on my life, then it was worth the rant, as I'd call it. So thank you so much, guys. Look forward to meeting all you. Thank you. Hey, if you love this interview, unbelievable interview. I talked about the power of events, and you guys know that I love events. I wanna share everything I learned at Grant Cardone's 10X Growth Conference event. It's right there. Click on that video, and I'll see you there. That was the biggest thing I took away from Grant Cardone's two-day mastermind. In the first hour, he spent the first hour talking about an ideal life.