 The next speaker, him and I may be doing something special on tele-sales for those that come to Vegas. All right? He knows his stuff. Good buddy of mine. I'm as close to him as almost anyone in the insurance industry. Love the dude. He cares. Managing partner of North Star Insurance Advisor. His whole family. Everybody is amazing. They've been a part of every 8% and we're going to keep that rolling forever, if you will. Super knowledgeable on tele-sales. They built a monster. They're going to do over 30 million this year. He was doing a bunch of free webinars and giving everything away. The dude has a massive heart. He cares and he has scaled him and others. His partners and his family have scaled a massive, massive, massive, massive phone sales company. So I'm excited for him to actually release his story, how if you don't quit you can't fail and the current state of the insurance industry, please welcome a virtual stage. My good buddy, tele-sales machine, Mr. Ramiz Hakim. Hey, 8% nation. What is going on? This is Ramiz Hakim, owner and co-founder of North Star Insurance Advisors. And I want to come with you with a special message today. You can't fail if you don't quit. Listen, in my life there's been many, many, many situations where I was faced with the decision to bet on myself or to cash out my chips. And those that make it to the top of their niches, their markets, their industries, they're the ones that lean into their problems and absorb the blunt force that's about to go down. Now, those that don't make it are the ones that cash in their chips and move on to the next opportunity. I want to encourage you today not to run and hide during these uncertain times. I believe that during these times there are four separate phases that each and every one of us are going to be encountering right now. The first one is the denial phase. How many of us, even still now, are in this phase of denial where we think it's just about over. It's almost done. I don't need to adjust. I'm going to stay with business as usual. Eventually you'll move out of that phase or you're going to run out of business. See, we all thought that by Easter we'd be back to work as usual and here we are coming and leaving through the Easter season. After that, you become afraid. Once you accept the fact that we got a problem, and now you're afraid, you begin to contract, you're nervous, you make sporadic decisions because you understand you need to make ends meet and there may not be enough cash reserves to have you make it for as long as what you think it is. I was there not long ago. We were looking at a situation where we had eight total call centers, a home office with a couple hundred people and seven satellite centers, support staff, marketers, sales agents, customer service reps, contracting, HR. How do we get people that have used to coming to work at the same place every single day for years and then overnight switch them to go work from home without a robust IT department, but you have to overcome that fear. You see, you can just quit and cash in your chips. You can cash in your chips and say, okay, I've had enough. I've made what I needed to make. Let me take what's mine and let me move on or you lean in and that's what we did. And because we've done that, we are now experiencing incredible growth, the highest profits we've ever seen, the highest morale we've ever seen. People are thankful and grateful and their level of loyalty to the companies through the roof that now takes me to the next level, which is I believe resourcefulness. Once you have put together a plan and a strategy and execute, you now become resourceful. There's some optimism there. Hey, we may not be clicking at all cylinders, but we're doing the best we can and you become getting better and better and better. And like I said in our situation, we're a better company now during this time than any time before, which then leads to the fourth phase of this crisis, which now becomes confidence. We are confident that we're going to come out of this better than we've ever been before. We are confident that we will be a company that will be forever changed for the good. That this situation was not a setback. It was a setup to expose the inefficiencies in our company to force us to feel some of the areas that needed to be firmed up. So we denied it. Then we were afraid. Then we became resourceful and now we're confident. Now in this level where I believe North Star is right now, where I am right now, when we are in this level of confidence, it is our responsibility to begin pulling our neighbors out of the denial phase, out of the afraid phase and helping them during the resourceful phase. Listen, if you refuse to quit, you will never fail. Of course, you're going to stumble. Of course you're going to make mistakes. Of course you will. But see, you have a decision after each and every one of those things. You see, only the great salespeople, only the great companies, only the great IMOs and agencies are going to come out of this situation better. Everyone else is going to retract and that starts with a decision. Are you going to double down on yourself, on your abilities, on your commitment, on your work ethic, on your discipline? Are you going to bet on yourself? And if you bet on yourself and you go all in on yourself, you have nothing to worry about. You'll never fail when you lean in to those problems. I remember getting started in the insurance business. Final expense is where I started and I really, really enjoyed the line of work. I enjoyed the money. I enjoyed talking to the customers. But I was getting burnt out. I was experiencing no shows. I was sitting in homes that I did not enjoy being in. I was having a call on leads and trying to finagle my way into homes. And although those are important aspects of the sale, it was just burning me out. But I saw hope and there was a glimmer there. And so I doubled down on myself. I went all in on myself. I started hiring people on payroll with money I didn't even have yet. I was counting on me to make sales to pay payroll. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. I put myself in a position where I had to perform, where I had to produce, where my hours were going to be 24 hours a day of work to make sure I could make ends meet. I went all in on me. And because of that, and there was many of times where it would have been so much easier to throw in the towel, cash in my chips, take what little I had left, and move on to the next thing. But we were not designed to be mediocre. You see, mediocrity is a decision that you make every day when you wake up. You will never fail ever if you refuse to quit. So where are you now? What you're dealing with now is the same story that many people that preceded you had to face. Now, the circumstances may be a little different, but it's really not that different. Situations will come and situations will go. The situation we're in now just happens to affect everybody. But this virus is no different than a traumatic event in your life specifically. The only difference is now it's a bit easier to feel sorry for yourself because everyone's dealing with it and the government is here to help us. Folks, that is a dangerous way of looking at this situation. Snap out of it. You're already in the process of quitting. You're staying in the denial phase. When you figure out that you got what it takes, you may need to finesse some things because you're going to learn a new skill set. But once you commit to that and stick to the plan and require that discipline from yourself, you'll never stop growing as a business. You'll always be expanding. You'll be able to employ your friends and family, give opportunities to people, and then invest back in your community. Folks, I want to give you a good word today. You can do this. I got in the insurance business when I was 19 years old. I didn't know a thing about business. What I did know was that my parents instilled in me hard work, commitment, loyalty, follow-through. That's all I had. I had no sales ability. I had no training. I barely even had any decent leads to call on, but we made it happen. We made it work. Today, because we have continued to push through many of the hurdles, we're now seeing the fruits of our labor. It required a major national catastrophe to really test what is it that you've been building over these past 10 years. I paralleled this situation with the number of them before this, for me personally. I have worked with carriers before where I showed up Monday morning and found out they were in receivership. That's a disaster for a business, much like this virus. Or how about the carrier that just pulls out of the market and gives you no, they don't tell you that they're going to be doing that. They just surprise you. That's a catastrophe. One of your lead vendors goes belly up and you're accounting on them to follow through with something for you this week. That's a catastrophe. How about when you're heavily invested in television and the election cycle is beginning to take much longer than anybody expected? And so now you can't even afford to compete with some of the big retail shops in this country. That's a catastrophe. Again, the difference between some of the stuff I've outlined for you and this virus specifically is that this one just affects everybody. And really when you go back and look at your life and what you've been through, you have faced much worse than this and you're still here to tell about it. This is just a part of your story. This is just another one of those things that you can put another notch on your belt and say, I overcame that too. So you have what it takes. You've moved through these stages of catastrophe and trauma and now you need to make a decision. Good luck out there. Cody, the 8% crew have put together what I believe to be the most premier group of individuals that are going to help take this industry from what it once was to what it is going to be. The voices of the past are being drowned out. The old way of doing business is beginning to shed, becoming exposed for what it is. There's hope for you. You can make this happen. And the people that you see on the top that you try to model after that you might look up to, let me tell you something. There's no difference between them and you. Keep fighting friends. It's worth it and it will be worth it. And one day we'll be able to sit around a table, break bread and talk about how amazing this time was where we felt like quitting, but we decided not to fail. See you in Las Vegas. Ramiz, a dude tells it like it is. Awesome job, buddy. Thanks for being a part of this. Thanks for being a part of all of them. Super excited to see you dominate the stage in Vegas on this exact topic. Dude drops like it's hot. Like he's one of the most underrated speakers in the industry, flew with his words, knows this stuff. Huge thanks for being a part of this. All of North Star and Ramiz. Thank you so much, buddy. Appreciate that very much. All right, so you watched this video and you want to learn how to take a live call and transfer it from an opener to a closer. That video's for you. Click on it and I'll see you there. Again, I'm not sure what time you're watching this video, right? Intro, expert, control, qualify, transfer. This is how to effectively transfer a live call from an opener to a closer.