 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 $85,000 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 I'm not saying I got my license. I'm licensed to sell it. I understand what a term product is and the difference between that and the whole life. That's a good start. But other than that, I'm probably the dumbest insurance guy you're going to 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, you know, the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, I'm going to 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 Cisco where his house is right by the Dallas Star and he 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, you know, 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 just I just like felt another higher level. And I'm like, oh, I got more stuff I want, you know, to get from him and get a chance and he's so busy and I 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, you know, literally jumping from one couch to another friend's couch and then have somewhere to live and we got my car repoed and, you know, 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, if you go to 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 where 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. Remember asking 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. You're not going to want it in eight or nine years anyway. He's like, you ever go 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, they, they, 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 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, you ever been on a good vacation? So, no. He's like, you know, you get there, you know, he starts describing his vacation. It seems like, you know, it's like, and then it went on one time when 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? That is cool. I felt bad though. Like, I 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 to 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. 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 that costs you $5,000 a night. No. He's like, so when you're done that vacation 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. Because 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? 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're, 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, that some things happen 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 wasn't, 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? He'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 in my life where I had three assistants. I was, I wasn't married at the time. I was 38 years old. I've lived in the bachelor life with the, you know, home theater room in the basement with a 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? That's what I was used to. Oh, yeah. That's why I used to being 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's before insurance. Okay. 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 was surprised when he reached into the phone and was like, screw you. And he was turning back. Oh, it was over the phone? 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. And I sent out a video. You heard a story, the 10 of those guys. I thought of Marlon. I said, okay. I know he's got it in him. Here's a chance. Send him the video. Nine out of 10 came back and they said, we have an interest. And I'm like, okay. I know how these pyramid deals work. Right. You're like, I don't want to jump in after that. Yeah. I said insurance. That's a pyramid deal. Right. It's the best one. Insurance is such a great pyramid deal. Right. You need a license to participate in that one. That's right. I say that with Jess because of like the ignorant people say dumb stuff. Right. Oh, it's a pyramid. Okay. 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 like that one. I like corporate ladder why someone's standing on your head. I mean, how smart is that fill out your resume and resume at 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. Man, 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. Yeah. Downsized, resized, restructured. I met a guy today. I was recruiting. He said he got strategically realigned. Right in the zip recruiter. You lost your job, buddy, right? I got strategically realigned. That's a good one. That's a good one, right? You know, strategically realigned. Well, you got fired or you lost your job. Who was in? You said that, didn't you? What? I said, yeah. So you mean like you don't have a job right now or like what is I said, what is strategically realigned me? But so I called radical. How am I going to, you know, 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, you know, 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. It's like, well, it's a regulated industry. It really doesn't work that way. I said, what do I 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 she was 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. It 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 got to crush this thing and do it in four days. 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 like 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've learned and you can motivate people. Because at this point in time, I'd spent 10 years doing that. And I, you know, 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 marketing made millions of dollars. I used 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 now. Hey, you know what? There's a lot of that. 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 doesn't mean 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't 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, 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, why don't you just go and 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, right? 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 this name calling you back. I had bonus leads. I bought $3 leads. You didn't slow down at all on 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 quicker and I'll have their attention. I bought 70 leads. I think like $500, $550 on 70 aged leads, I guess you call them. We call them bonus leads. Oh, 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 put three appointments. I'm going to call through 70 of them like one time. I'm like double dialed, triple dialed, call from different phone numbers. I got a hold of probably 45 of those and booked three appointments. Oh my. Right. So I call Brad up. 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 going to 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 got to slow down. I'm in Texas too, right? Yeah. 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 want to shoot myself when I'm on it sometimes. You're good. I'm with you. Low and slow was the key, right? That's right. Low and slow. Low, slow and controlled, right? Right. And so, again, I, you know, you build me up this great guy. Because of the support structure and if you're in it, 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 Honeycutt, another person on speed dial. And I literally would call from the home. Now, I want to suggest that you want to 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. Yeah. We took those nine people. I took the things that I learned about recruiting, which we're going to talk about on a webinar later tonight. And I took that, those nine people turned it into 30 and eventually turned it into 69. So I had 30 people in licensing and I backed myself in a corner, which I talked about earlier, which is key. I couldn't afford not to make it work. Because now I had 30 eyes on me. I had 30 people look at me like, what's Nate going to do? I had Marlon Faulkner looking at me, going, what's Nate going to do? And my ego, which this is where it's healthy, goes, I ain't going to 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 because I'm impressive. It's just I knew people and I was done. Did you even know how to run an appointment? No, I mean they have a script and they had it. You know, I went to their, their, they're 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, 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 foreign 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, I mean, I'm on the phone real quick. He gave me his cell number. I just want to make sure I don't write the wrong thing down cause I don't think he wanted me to come back to the house and get another signature from you guys. Right? Okay, great. Some of the phone like, hey, you know, brought him sitting here with Sally and Bob and that wasn't their names. But, and right underneath their address, there's a line right here. I just want to make sure it's there. So scary. And, and where there says DL, what do I put there? And he goes drivers licenses. My first appointment. I said, yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. Great. That's what I thought. Hey, thanks, Brad. Appreciate it. You know, and I skipped to the next line and I came back because I felt so dumb. Yeah, you want to go ahead and drive your driver's license, please. They're gonna be like this guy's an idiot. And so it was just massive. I was taught massive action, constant correction, massive action, constant correction. And then, you know, 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 quick would you make them? So, you know, I was, I was that guy, you know, light yourself on fire and people will come watch you burn. You know, so I mean, 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, where, you know, I can make that money. Did you still work at your other job as well? It wasn't a job or a career or whatever. But yeah, did you stay? I 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, 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. I can't help that was dumb. But hey, there's hope. There's hope, right? Dude, like, there's definitely hope. But I had a good support staff, a good supporting 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 the 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 got to be a good cheater. And I don't mean that in a negative way. You just got to 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 or 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. I don't want to 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. 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, you know, want to give up what they have to get what they want. You think you can 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, I know they don't want you. I can't. I can't train someone that doesn't have commitment. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're going to love. It's right there. Click on it. See you in there. If you had to look back over the last 13 years and you had to think of one aha moment that really maybe shifted things for you, right? Got your attention, made you change something.