BHC Josh Clark & Brad Girard

Good morning, Adam. Good morning. Josh and Brad are both on. All right. Fantastic. Good morning there, Josh. Hey, good morning, Adam. Hey, man, glad to have you on this morning. Looking forward to your recruiting tips. Me, too. It's my first big hitter speaking slot. Yeah, fantastic. Glad to have you on. Where are you located, Josh? Akron, Ohio. Okay, that's what I thought. I was just making sure I had the right information. Well, good, man. We're glad to have you on this morning, excited to hear what you have for us. We'll start here in just a couple minutes, let you run for about 12 minutes, what your best recruiting tips are, and then if I need to, I can jump in with a question or two, and then we will keep you on for the main call as well, have you jump in at some point and ask Brad some questions. Brad Jordan is on for the main call, so that sounds good with you. Yeah, whatever you guys need. All right, fantastic. And then Larry will be jumping on here shortly as well. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, good morning. By the way, those checks came in. They were supposed to come in Friday. Those what came in? Checks from Susan. Oh, okay. They finally came in. You sound like you're a little bit far away from the phone. Well, I'm just, I'm not. Jumping in for now. Yeah. Yeah, okay. All right. Well, Josh, we'll go ahead and count down and let you get started, man, if you are ready. So I just said, I'm kind of like the pre-game call, because I thought we started at 9, am I wrong? I'm sorry. Josh, we start at 845 with the pre-call, with our recruiting tips. Well, then I better be ready then, huh? Good thing I guess I didn't make that clear to you. Yeah, we go 845, and then we switch over to 9 o'clock for the main call, with the 845 recruiting tips. I'm good. Let's rock and roll. All right. Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to our pre-call recruiting tips segment with Josh Clark. Josh is a former healthcare administrator. He started full-time with the company in 2014 and became an NSD in 2023 with $50 million in assets under management and $360,000 enrolling, 12-month income. Good morning, Josh. What recruiting tips do you have for us today? Hey, good morning, guys. Really honored to be on the call. And some of this might be a little, you know, like redundant, and we've heard the same things, but I believe that around here in our business and for America, the story doesn't change. We just have to be reminded. And it's almost like every time that, you know, our business is going through a funk or I'm just kind of just stopping and asking myself, am I doing the right things, or do we need to change our system, or do we need to, you know, look at a different presentation, or use this software over here. It's like every time, if I just go back to the fundamentals that, you know, recruiting is number one and it solves every other problem, I mean, that's the answer like 99% of the time. So, you know, I wanted to start with that because that has helped me so many times to avoid, you know, changing things and slowing my business down and confusing my people. And when I just keep the main thing the main thing, that we are married to recruiting. It is not, it's a, it's number one, you know, and I know I think Larry said this, that when you talk about recruiting 100% of the time, you can go fast. And as soon as you start talking about it 99% of the time, it cuts in half, 98% of the time, it stops completely. And for those of you on the call that have not heard Emily and my story, you know, we were RVPs in 2015 and just kind of hanging around to 150 grand a year in income until 2019 and never really had big recruiting going on. I was always a decent personal producer. And in December of 2018, Adam, we had two recruits in my entire, I didn't have any RVPs at the time. So it was just, that was it, two recruits in December of 2018. And I was just in a really frustrating place in the business and feeling like I was not getting what I wanted out of Primerica and out of, you know, this amazing vehicle that we're in. And I just really looked around the company and looked at what other people were doing. And I stumbled onto Larry Weidel's four-point game plan. And those videos, Larry, if you could hear me, you, like, saved my career with those videos. And it just made a ton of sense to me. You know, I taught the four-point game plan to my team. And we called an emergency meeting in December of 2018 with my, you know, ten people that showed up. And I just, I showed them. I said, hey, here's the new direction we're going in. We are going to make recruiting number one. We're going to make it the centerpiece of our entire business. We're going to oversteer towards recruiting. And we're going to make the live overview meeting, you know, where my people just, their job was to set guests and put them in front of me. And I started with one a day. And then I, at one point I was doing two overviews a day in my office when we were still, you know, mostly in person. Ninety days later, we recruited 57 in my Bay Shop. So, March of 2019, we recruited 57 in a month in my Bay Shop. I had never done even close to that. I think the most we had ever done previously was maybe 20. And that's what started the chain reaction of vice president promotions. So, fast forward a couple years here, we are, we have 11 direct RVPs. And we're about to cross, we should cross over our fourth diamond this month. And it's really, that's what it all started with, just a change there. And, you know, you mentioned that we have 50 million in AUM through FIRST. Another cool part of that whole story, you know, we did, in 2018, we did 2 million in investment volume. And in 2019, I stopped talking about it. And we did 6 million because, you know, obviously we had a ton more recruits. And we just stuck to our, you know, part of our system was always asking for statements and whatever. So, you know, it's just all these great things started happening. We were asked to speak at MIT. We were top five in the company Bay Shop licensing in that first half of the year for 2019. And everyone was asking me licensing tips. So, why don't we talk about licensing. And we didn't change a thing about licensing. So, my answer was, well, we started recruiting 50 people a month. It's how we, you know, license more people. So, again, the story didn't change. You know, we did recruiting solves that problem, too, if you have, you know, a system that works in place. And so, and now, Adam, I'll just add a couple more things, and you guys can cue me on whatever you want me to talk about. But just down to, like, when I'm working with the new recruit. I think we've got to have a very – it's so easy for people to get distracted and overwhelmed, which I hate that word. But it's a word that people use a lot, new recruits coming into our business that are part-time. And, you know, yes, we have to be an intrusion in their life, because otherwise nothing's going to change for them, and nothing's going to change for us if we're not intruding in their life a little bit. But the problem is, when we become too big of an intrusion, they cut us out. They don't cut out TV and softball and the family – the emergency family cookout, which I literally had somebody yesterday reschedule their orientation because they had a cookout come up. That's what they told me. So we have to have a simple way to help people understand why do we recruit, that that is the number one goal of the organization, just like Larry talks about in the four-point game plan. And so even if somebody is more excited about, you know, the financial planning part of our business, I'm going to say to them, if Adam tells me that, I'm going to say, Adam, listen, I'm going to help you. This is the greatest place for you to be, a spare-time, part-time, or full-time financial advisor, and I'm happy to help you get to that goal. I need you to help me with my goal, which is to grow my organization through recruiting. So let me show you how we can both, you know, reach our goals. This is how we're going to start building you a team. And whatever your play is there, it might be something on social media or, you know, building their top teammate list that you then, you know, that you then reach out to for them. But something where it's simple and it's fast, it's urgent, that I'm going from Adam to three new people, and then from those three to nine, 27, 81, 243, 729. I want to work through people, not at people. I just assume that the person I'm in front of is not really the person that I want. I want their market. I want that three, nine, 27, 81, 243, 729 through them. So I need a system that right from the get-go, right from orientation, we're talking about building a team. I'm selling our VP, Adam and Larry, really early, really early. Like at the interview, even, I start talking about, hey, just so you know, this is what's on the menu. And I talk about becoming a vice president and how, you know, that instead of 100% of your income off of one person's effort, you at a job or self-employment, here we can have 1% of our income coming off of 100 different sources, 100 different people's efforts and time. You know, and I think that that's a better way to live your life. And so I tie that all together and then we take action, you know, because they have fear, right? So if I let them sit with their fear, that becomes an untameable monster for them. But action conquers fear. So if I can help them take action quickly and I make it easy for them, like, again, something on social media they post or text they send out, that's much easier than saying, okay, Adam, find me some people to recruit. Let's find your first five teammates or whatever. Okay, so then we can go into the client side. But that's really what's helped a lot, and especially we're at 300 recruits in my base shop year to date through FIRST. I'd have to look. I think we're over 1,000. So, you know, I don't know if I've got all the answers, Adam and Larry, but I will tell you that this, you know, a couple of these changes have taken me from personal producer pre-America to I've got a hierarchy and, you know, we've made about 50 grand a month the past three months. So I think it all started back in 2018 when I was just frustrated and decided, you know what, I'm going to oversteer towards recruiting just to prove to myself that it doesn't work. I'm just going to sell out to that and let's see what happens. And it's one of the greatest decisions in my business I've ever made. So that's what I got for you, Adam and Larry. If there's any questions or things you want to cue me on, I'm happy to talk about whatever you want. Josh, when you made that decision to focus on recruiting, what were some of the first things you did as far as going out and talking to people? Or I don't know if y'all or anybody back then were using social media, but what were the main things you were doing to cause that explosion as far as are you out and about talking to people? Did you kind of recycle the people you had there going through their warm market? Or how did y'all get that going to get it started? Where did we get the activity and the people to start going through our overviews? Yeah, it was wherever we could get them really was the answer. But a couple areas back then that we were focused on was the number was ten a day. You know, my million-dollar earners, Jerry and Rhonda Byer, and that was what Jerry taught me is that a full-timer should be able to set ten new guests a day to the overview. And if a full-timer does that, you know, four or five days a week, they're going to have, you know, four or five direct recruits for the month to work with. So where did those people come from? A couple things that we've used in the past. Back then, yeah, social media wasn't – I think we were probably messaging at that time. I don't think we had figured out things like list building posts or, you know, like the social media play, like some people in the company call it. But a few other areas, I mean, I would tell people, look, Google different business types and self-employed people and professionals in your area. The store number is right there on the Google. And, you know, a lot of professionals, they have their personal contact info right there. And, you know, here's a script, call them. And, you know, we're expanding. We're looking for people that might want to make some additional income or partner with us to, you know, increase, you know, both our income and just see who's open. I mean, we would just – we would cold call. Of course, you know, before someone's going to cold call, we're going to go to their wedding list and their top 1,000 list, and we're going to get that to 100% contacted. And I really think that if we – if someone has some credibility in a good market, they might never need to do anything else if they're just working through their top 1,000 list and then turning those people into – and then we're steaming those folks. And we're – so, again, working through other – working through people, not just at people, you know, saying things like, Adam, look, you might be all set. You might be making all the money you want to make, but I bet you know some really sharp people that might be open to some additional income. So – and then you start the conversation with, you know, getting three 927-81 through those people. You know, clients. I went back through my whole client list. I give this advice a lot to people that ask me about how they can get recruiting going. If you've done a good job with, you know, personal production and you've got a big client list, I would just go through that list and tell all your clients. Like, you call them up, you give them some good news about their account or whatever, or just thank them for, you know, trusting you, for being your client. And I would just tell them. If Adam was my client, I'd say, hey, Adam, listen, I need your help, okay? I really want to expand my business. I want to open a few new offices. And so I want to find some really, you know, great people who would be open to either additional income or even a career change down the line. So I want three good referrals from you, Adam. I'm going to say a word that would describe somebody. You tell me who comes to mind. And, Adam, listen, those people probably won't be interested, but they might know somebody. And here's what I'm going to say. I just go through. You know, I want to make sure they know that I'm going to treat their names with respect and it's going to reflect positively on them. And go through your client list and get, you know, get a big sheet of warm referrals. And I want to start there before I start cold calling. We've used business cards, pitch bowls, resumes. All of it, Adam, is the answer. All right, fantastic, Josh. Fantastic, Josh. Thanks so much. To download Josh's recruiting tips and more, visit our website at ydellonwinning.com. Just click on the big hitter link at the top of the website and enter username P-R-I-U-S-E-R and the password GOGOGO, both all lower case. All right, good morning, Brad. Good morning, Adam. How are you doing this morning? Glad to have you on. Happy to be here. We are going to jump right on to the main call and get it going. Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Good morning, Monday morning conference call crew. Welcome to the big hitter call. This is Adam Wydell. It is Monday, May 13, 2024. Let's say hello to our speakers. Good morning, Brad. Good morning, Adam. Good morning, Josh. Hey, good morning, guys. And good morning to Larry. Good morning, everybody. As of today, there are over 100 RVPs and above with 30 or more in recruits and 59 RVPs and above with 30,000 or more in premium. There are 46 below RVP with 30 or more recruits and 11 below RVP with 30,000 or more in premium. The top five base shots are the Edwards, 25 by 86, the Naranjos, 84 by 88, Deanna Macias and Maria Luna, 125 by 98, the Finals, 134 by 117, and number one, Lorenzo Carrion and Daniela Almarez, 127 by 127. On today's call, we are spotlighting million-dollar earner Brad Girard. Brad started in 88 and is currently 17 direct RVPs and $1 billion in assets under management. In 1992, he learned about double-digit recruiting from Andy Young. For 23 straight years, he has double-digited monthly in his base shop. All right, we'll get it started. Larry, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Adam. I'll kick things off. Brad, great to have you back on. It's always exciting to get an update from what's happening up in your world, other side of the country or continent. It was great to hear from Josh. I was reminded, Josh, great ideas don't care who used them. When we pass on to other people things we've learned, magic can happen. It's up to us to keep the magic happening. I was listening to Kenneth Clark's series on civilization last night for a little bit. He talked about how civilizations, eventually all civilizations, it may take a long time, but eventually they all fall apart because they either get arrogant or they get bored or whatever. That goes to the leadership. It's up to us to keep things fresh, exciting, new, keep challenging our people, basically so we can continue to deliver, fulfill our promise. I don't think any of us can sit back and relax when we're only doing 1% of the market and there's so many people that need to be helped. There's so many people out there that can come in and change their life, make this their career, and basically reinvent the whole business, doing it quicker, faster, better, with the tools that we have and the experience we have today. That's an excitement that's in front of all of us if we keep ourselves engaged and moving forward. The sky is the limit unless we decide we've had enough. The way we'll get there is to keep on keeping on doing what works with excitement. I see Brad now has done the Double-Digit Recruiting for 23 years, and I promise you when he gets up in front of his room, in front of his people, they see an excitement, they see an electricity, because he knows it's not what you say, it's how you say it. So Brad, really proud of the job you've done up there, the example you've set. Here's the thing I'm excited about for you, Brad. When you keep on blowing and going and you stay on track and you keep on growing, eventually explosions come. When I know about you and people who stay on track like you have, that sooner or later the planets light up and then all of a sudden you get the potential to have a ten-time increase in your organization over a 12, 18, 24-month period of time, and because you've laid that solid foundation, Brad, that growth keeps on going, and you don't slump after you have that big surge. So I'm excited about what's in front of you, proud of you continuing to keep pushing on with enthusiasm, and so looking forward to hearing what's on your mind, what you've been talking to people about, what you've been seeing, and what you're excited about right now. So thanks for being on, Brad. It's an honor to be here always, Larry. So tell us what you've got going on and what you're excited about and looking forward to right now. Why are you still excited at this stage of your career? Honestly, I don't think I've accomplished anything. I just feel like the big money in primary, because we're seeing right now with Willie getting his $6 million rate, I really believe the big money still hasn't been made. I look at the business, and when I look at my potential versus what my reality is, I always feel I'm a million miles away, and even though I'm always grateful, I'm never satisfied. I think that one day before I die, hopefully, I can figure this damn thing out and have that kind of an explosion that you're talking about, a 10X explosion. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep grinding it out. I love the business. It's financed this spectacular life that I've been able to live, and I think that's really what this is. This is the world's greatest funding mechanism. When you come to Primerica with a big dream and a big demand, Primerica will pay a big reward to help you finance that big dream and big demand. But when you come here with asking not much, it's going to give you not much, and that's just the way that I believe. But I look at it, and I look at the business like a big piñata, and I'm just going to keep hitting it until the candy falls. What I'm talking to my guys about, my team about right now, is continue to prospect every day, continue to build wide. I think every single person in the company can easily add three directs a month to their business, and I think that's the foundation to DoubleDigit is building three directs and then going into those markets, because I don't recruit people, I recruit markets, and then driving into those markets. I think that a lot of people are frustrated in the company, and a lot of people who recruit are even frustrated in the company, and I think that's because a lot of people don't really understand building. They forget about the multiplication of the business, and they're out there just doing addition. So I mastered multiplication because I'm very introverted. It was very painful for me every single day to wake up and have to go prospect for new people and face the rejection that we all have to face, which is what stops people from moving forward, stops people from going and getting three or four directs a month, is the potential rejection they might face. But if you go get three or four directs a month, and then you really get good at what Josh talked about in his recruiting tips of driving through their markets and helping them get three to four, because I believe every IBA, and you said this years ago, I remember you saying every recruit has a battery life. Are you going to spend that battery life chasing a sale, or are you going to spend that battery life chasing a recruit, which I believe regenerates the battery and then gives you a new market to work in. And so I think all hierarchies, all great hierarchies are built wide by building deep through roll-up and replacement, and as important as width is, which I got really good at adding three or four directs a month, but as important as width is, I really believe depth is the key to building an agency that produces agencies. And so I constantly am reminding people that, listen, cold prospecting might be the match, but warm building, driving through markets, going deep is the fire. It's the life-sustaining fire. And I use an example that a recruit is kind of like a sparkler. You see kids at a birthday party. They get those sparklers, and they like that sparkler, and, man, that sparkler creates a ton of excitement for a really short period of time, you know, as they're holding that sparkler in the air and looking at it and moving it around. But in a minute, that sparkler is dead, and the excitement leaves. And I see that as a recruit. A recruit is like a sparkler, and you can't cook with a sparkler. You can't warm yourself with a sparkler. The only thing a sparkler is really good for is keeping you entertained for a moment, unless you use that sparkler to light a fire in that minute that it's burning. And if you get a fire going, then you can sustain life. Then you can cook your meals, and you can stay warm at night, and you can fight off predators, you know. And so fire is really what you want, and fire comes through driving deep. And we use circle charts. I use a circle chart with my team all the time, and I tell them, listen, I can tell you exactly what's wrong with your business. If you will draw out a chart of all of the active people in your business that you have, licensed and unlicensed, in your base shop, send it to me. I can tell you what's wrong with your business and why you seem to be stuck on a hamster wheel just running as fast as you can but never seeming to get traction. And usually when they send me their circle chart, it looks like a Ferris wheel. It's just a revolving door of recruits coming in. The names change. The chart looks exactly the same. And maybe, maybe you might have one or two of those recruits with one or two recruits underneath them. And I look at that and go, that is a long-term failing strategy, just recruiting directs and not building depth. And so when somebody sends me a circle chart and it's got spokes, it's got legs that are built, when you get an IDA, your ability to drive through that IDA's market and go 10 deep in a month, which everybody can do because every single recruit has an easy recruit. Everyone, every single recruit has somebody they can recruit if you will get on them within 24 to 48 hours. Art always talked about that. And so if you'll actually do that, you can be 10 deep, 20 deep, 30 deep in a leg within a month. And if you're sitting wondering, why is my person not showing up to the meeting? Why are they not showing up to take the test? Why are they not interested in the business? Why are they not engaged? It's because you're using the wrong type of motivation to try to motivate them. The greatest motivation in the world is always the fear of loss. And so if you drive deep, you anchor people into the business. You force them into licensing. You force them to try and fight for district leader. You force them to show up to the meetings. You force them to the convention. No one's going to stay home if they've got three people on their team actually going to the convention. They're going to go because they're afraid of missing out. The challenge is I think that we a lot of times just are hoping that we can recruit somebody. We're all looking for a Mario Arizon or a Miguel Illich. Man, if I can just find one of those, that will change. And they do. Those are like Powerball wins, you know, when you find a Miguel Illich or a Mario Arizon. But the reality is most of us will never win the Powerball. Now, I'm not saying don't buy the ticket. Don't keep recruiting. Don't keep looking for that franchise player. But in the meantime, you still have to make a living. You still have to build a business. And most of us are never going to find a Miguel Illich or a Larry Weidel or a Mario Arizon. But you can build a monster business just by staying focused on the fundamentals and driving deep and building teams and anchoring them in the business. And so, you know, that's really what our focus is right now, Larry, is building legs, building teams, driving depth, building double digit by building teams underneath people. Adam, you know, Brad made some great points. But the sparkler idea, I tell you what, what comes out of your mouth when you talk to your people better sparkle. And, you know, like most of the country will not even talk about Willie Narajo. You never have – most of the RVPs and the company will not bring up in their full-timer meeting Willie Narajo, Miguel Illich, and all the, you know, the big breakthrough, the – anyway, I won't go down through the list. But the people doing these incredible things. However, it's because, you know, they just don't think it's possible. But the ones that grow are going to be talking about that. The ones that grow are going to be talking about the excitement in the company because they're going to say – they're going to realize the way I always looked at it, Brad, is if it happened in Primerica, it happened to me. It happened to our company. The fact that, you know, somebody goes out there and breaks a record in income or production or whatever, that's a sign that that can happen. They basically get permission for all of us to do it. And you're not going to do it. You know, we don't know what our people are capable of. And Miguel Illich talks about the fact that he hadn't changed, you know. Willie, you know, lived the example, kept blowing and going, talking big, selling the dream, living the dream, you know, positive example, breaking records himself. And Miguel eventually caught on fire. And so, you know, they don't come in the door, hey, you know, I got 30 recruits this month. I don't see a Miguel Illich. I don't see a Mario Arizon. Mario Arizon was developed, you know. He was a young kid in T-shirts and shorts, you know. And, you know, they kind of warm up over time. So they're not necessarily ready-made when they come in. You know, that's why I like what you're doing there, you know, with, you know, so many of these people, I mean, we have people in the company, I won't call names, million-dollar earners, that were in the business for 15 years. And then they're, you know, went to some hierarchy event, and the leader said to them, you guys, you know, and they would be, you know, they'd have their watches or something like that. And they said, you know, why are you guys selling yourself short? You know, you've been around here 10 years. You've been around here 5 years, 15 years. You got a watch. You know, maybe you have a ring. What's going on with you? You know, why are you selling yourself short, you know? What's the difference between you and these other people out there? You don't think about that? And, you know, somehow somebody challenges them. They catch on fire. They start using some of the same game plans and same language and same ideas that people who grow use, like Josh shifted over to the four-point game plan. These ideas are out there. You know, ideas are a dime a dozen, but the people who use them are priceless. And so the people that are doing things you're not doing are talking about stuff and, you know, selling their people on things that you're not. And so all you got to do, you know, you can get more mileage out of Willie going over 6 million if you talk about it more than Willie talks about it to his people. The thing is the people who do the great things are embarrassed about it. They feel like they're bragging, so they don't really talk about it. But you can take all the success that happens to all the other people and primarily get more mileage out of it than they get just by talking about it over and over and over and brainwashing your people that this is a possibility. Remind them like this. You think, well, you know, how many RVPs on this call have said to their bake shops, do you think we'll ever have a $6 million person come from our team? You think, you know, are we second-class citizens? Could we not dream maybe a $3 million or a $2 million? And why do we always have to be the clappers when these guys give the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 million dollars? Why can't we do something like that? You know, the way you have something like that happening in your life is you start putting the idea on the table and get people thinking about it. But they're not going to be thinking about it if you're not talking about it. So, Brad, the idea of the sparklers and, you know, having some excitement in your meetings, you know, nobody sold success stories more than I did. And you guys out there on the other side of the country, you know, or continent, you know, your people can feel there as much as everybody, as close to everybody else, people in Miami, if you're talking about it all the time. When we were in North Carolina, we were talking about all the great success they were having in Houston. Within 12 months, Houston was talking about us because we had more success stories than they did. And it's just a matter of what the leader, the vision of the leader and what the leader gets obsessed about, Brad, drives everything, don't you think? Yeah, 100%. You know, and I agree with you. Willie is my business partner. Willie, you know, and that's the way I talk. And I think that's the way everybody should talk. Look, my business partners and myself have built X. And in the beginning when you're out there doing things, you know, you feel like, well, what if someone asked me how much money I'm making or, you know, how long I've been here? I feel like a loser. And so it stops you from going out and giving it your all a lot of times. And I tell people, listen, I'm your business partner. You know, Larry's our business partner. We work together. This is like real estate, you know, a remix where the top guys will never share their best ideas. They'll never mentor other people because, you know, they want to keep the market for themselves. You know, and listen, we are going to be clappers at the convention. There's no question. This is going to be a neuronal hierarchy convention. Last convention, it was, you know, the Chamorro convention. This is a neuronal convention. And I'm going to be there clapping and cheering as loud as anybody, because I know that these people are not lucky. They have strategies. They've implemented over a long period of time and they outwork. Almost everybody else in the company and anybody who's sitting around saying, well, they're lucky or boy, they're Hispanic, or they're in Miami or there. And I hear all these excuses people make, Larry, of why Naranjo is so successful and why he's making six million. And instead of celebrating it, instead of using it to help you recruit, people are making excuses to excuse why they're not where they're at. And so we've got to celebrate the success of others, you know, and cheer them on, because at the end of the day, you know, I know Miguel and I know Willie and Diana. These people deserve every single ounce of success that they've got. And the fact that they're in the business that we're in means that our future can be exactly where their future is, you know. And I tell everybody, listen, being broke in Primerica is like starving in a grocery store. It's absolutely ridiculous today that everybody's not making $100,000 or $250,000 at Regional Leader. You know, the business is there. The market is there. Clients are screaming for help right now. Your clients are screaming for help. Everybody is looking for a way to make extra money. We've never been, I think, in a better position than we are right now. But you've just got to continue to go out there and hit the pinata. Absolutely. And so I'm going to get Adam involved. We're getting close to the midpoint. Adam, do you want to jump in? Yes. You're talking about being the Naranjo Convention this time, last time. What are you doing specifically with your guys as far as using the convention as a springboard into the summer and the rest of the year, getting activity going, creating excitement, things of that nature? How are you using the convention yourself to get as much as you can out of it as far as your business? Well, listen, Adam, I've got to be honest with you. I've got a love-hate relationship with the convention, you know, and I'm pretty sure all of us do. I mean, it's days of walking forever, trying to find a Chick-fil-A that you can get in line and get some food. It's never convenient for us. We're flying from the west coast of Canada. It's always been expensive. The dollar right now, Canadian economy sucks, you know, and so the dollar's not great. It's expensive. The convention's never convenient. But you cannot replicate what the convention can do. It's impossible. In an op meeting, in a one-on-one, on a Zoom call, it's impossible to replicate what the convention can do. And so they're spending $15 million on this convention to help you build your business. That's the way I look at it. And so my job is to sell people on get there, just get there, and that's what we're doing right now. Buy your plane ticket. If you're sitting around on this call right now saying, I'm just not sure and I don't know if it's convenient, I don't know if I can get the time off, take the first step. Register. Once you've taken the first step, go get a plane ticket. If you get a plane ticket and you end up in Atlanta and you don't have a hotel, you know, show up at the convention floor and start asking people, you got a place for me in your room. You'll figure it out. I've never missed one convention since the day I started. And people say, well, yeah, but if I was making your money, you know, I could afford to go too. And I'm like, we don't go to the convention because we can afford to go to the convention. We can afford to go to the convention because we went to the convention when we couldn't afford to go to the convention. So that's the message we're delivering. All right, fantastic. I'm going to jump in here with the mid-call announcements and then we'll see and then we'll get this thing going again. Check out Larry's podcast. This week's episode features the owner of not only a top dental business but also one of the region's independent, top independent brewing companies. He can teach you how to be successful in two totally different fields. Second, listen to this week's call on our replay line or download the call on wydellonwinning.com, click on the big hitter link at the top of the page, and enter username PRIUSER and the password go, go, go, both all lower case. The replay number for this episode is P-R-I-U-S-E-R. The replay number for this call is 667-771-7907, and the PIN is 982755-POUND. To stay in touch with Larry Wydell, follow on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and be sure to leave all your big hitter updates and thoughts and comments on this week's call. All right. Josh, you want to jump in with a question for Brad? Well, you know, Brad and I talk a lot, actually. We're, you know, Jerry and Rhonda, we're both in business with them. Jerry and Rhonda buy our ledges in the company. So, oh, my gosh, I'm sitting here trying to think of a question that I could ask Brad that I have not asked him before, but maybe I'll recycle something because it'll be helpful for people listening. Brad, I think one of the areas you've helped me a lot is in creating activity. Sometimes I feel like, you know, even at this stage of mine, I've been doing this for 11 years, and sometimes I feel so lost with how to get my people busy. And I know that's a big part of, you know, winning here is just keeping your people busy. And so you've taught me about, you know, marketing and the five to stay alive and, you know, having them, you know, be doing a, you know, following a strategy to create appointments because without appointments, nothing good is going to happen. So, Brad, why don't you talk about that? Like, what does a professional prospecting plan look like? What are the strategies that, you know, you use in your hierarchy to take people from, okay, I'm a new full-timer, Brad, tell me what to do, to, you know, they have enough activity in their calendar to where they're on pace to make over $100,000 a year? Well, you know, it starts with – it absolutely starts with a calendar. I mean, if you show me your calendar, I can tell you your future. Your calendar is your crystal ball. It predicts your future with amazing accuracy. And so nobody has to sit around and wonder, will I succeed here, won't I succeed here. Show me your calendar, I'll tell you. And so one of the things that I do right now with people is I tell them, listen, if you're using – you have to use Calendly or Acuity, you have to use these tools that are available out there to manage your schedule properly. And so send me your Calendly account, send me your Calendly link. I want to look at it and see when I can book an appointment with you because I think a lot of people just spend more time out of business than in business. If you open a restaurant or a grocery store or a kiosk in the mall or a tire store, you're going to show up and open that door every day. Now, at the end of the day, you're hoping the restaurant will take care of you, the tire store will take care of you, and you can hire a manager to open it. But in the beginning, you're opening the door every damn day. And I think that's what happens. Most people that come into Primerica, they move from employee to self-employed, and very quickly they become self-unemployed. And I love what Larry said because I think a lot of people think that guys like Mario, they just come in and they just – they're just the right type of person and they go to the top or Miguel. They come in and they just go to the top of this company. The reality is leadership is developed. So, you know, when people come into my business, I know if I don't help them manage, especially now where so many of our people are working from home, and as romantic as it sounds, work from home, and we celebrate that. We sell it. We recruit to that work from home concept because everybody wants to do that now. But the flip side of the romantic idea of working from home is most people can't work from home. They just are not disciplined enough to overcome the distractions that they get at home to be able to focus their energy on recruiting the amount of hours they've got to be recruiting a day. So I look at my job, especially with a new licensed person, is I've got to help them manage their schedule. So most of my guys use Google Calendar. I think most people in the company probably do. You know you can share your calendar. So I tell them, listen, set up a separate Google Calendar for your business. Block off the times. You know, you can block off the times you've got family events or whatever. You can block off whatever you want and then share that calendar with me because when you call me and say it's not working for me, I'm going to go onto your calendar and I'm going to show you that you're not working for it. And so if I've got access to their Google Calendar and their Calendly account, I can see exactly what's wrong with their business. And so that way I can focus on. Now if you're wide open and you're willing to work seven days a week because I don't want to beat around the bush. If you want to beat Miguel Illich, you're going to have to get up at 5 in the morning, be out making things happen at 6 a.m. and come home at midnight. Jorge Fanol said we do that seven days a week. You want to beat them, you've got to beat their activity. And so I want to look at that Calendly. And then the next thing I've got to do is I've got to give them a strategy to fill their calendar. And so we use block schedule a lot. I like to get prospecting done early in the day. I think, like I said, everybody can get three IVAs a month. Every single person in this company can easily get three IVAs a month if they will swing at that pinata four or five times a day. And so that's what we do. And I got three IVAs last month. I'm going to get three IVAs this month. And so we work a lot on their strategy of booking appointments. We teach them how to use social media. We teach them how to be involved in a B&I, how to work chamber of commerce events. If you're struggling right now and nothing's happening, great. Then you leave your house and go knock on your neighbor's door and say, hey, I'm expanding my business in the area and you wouldn't happen to know anybody. Or, you know, I'm an advisor in the area. I help people with their insurance and investment needs. Do you have somebody that you're working with right now? You can do that. If your neighbors aren't home in the daytime and you're wondering, what do I do at this moment, you can leave your house and you can go start walking down strip malls and walking in and talking to every business owner and say, hey, my name's Brad Gerard. I'm with Prime America in the area. We help people with their insurance and investment needs. Do you have somebody that you're working with right now? And most of the time they'll say yes. And then you can say, great, well, what would it take for me to be your person? And as you start getting into these conversations with people and building up your CRM with follow-up, you begin to find people who need this opportunity. They're looking to make extra money. This is not a difficult business. The difficult thing is just managing your mind and managing your calendar so that you can succeed. Explain CRM, Brad. Well, you know, CRM, the client relationship manager that the company has built, we've worked with them a lot on getting it. I think the thing is fantastic. My job as a professional salesperson who builds teams of salespeople is to, you know, build my – first of all, build my client base. I think everybody in a company should easily be able to add 100 clients personal, 100 clients a year to your business. And, you know, as you're recruiting, Art always said the purpose of recruiting is it's an easier way to get an appointment. It's an easier way to get a kitchen table. And some people come to me and they say things like, well, you know, I know I need to recruit, but I need to make money. And I never understood that. I'm like, what the hell? The only purpose in recruiting is to go grow your client base and grow your cash flow. And so the CRM is an amazing tool that the company has developed that allows you to build a drip campaign, build a – you can put a name in there, and then that person, whether it's a client or a prospect, is going to be automatically receiving content from you that will elevate your profile with them. And, you know, and it gives you an easy-build follow-up program. So you have to be using a CRM of some sort, or it's impossible to manage hundreds and hundreds of contacts that you get over a year. Well, the thing is that it's a professional term. It's used by, you know, in all industries where you're in marketing and sales and you've got clients to keep up with. So it's – I mean, it's part of becoming professional in today's environment and being able to not have to do things one by one. Explain – why don't you explain a little bit more, because I think it's underused, how people can get started using it, how it works, and how it works to your advantage. I mean, the first thing you do is just get on to P-O-L and get in there and start playing. I got to – you know, I know that it's easy for us sometimes to criticize the company and criticize, you know, P-O-L and, you know, and the tools. But I got to – Larry, I got to give props, man. A lot of us have been working with Julie and Bobby. And when – this year is going to blow your mind. The money that they've invested in tools to help you lead generate, because we – I talk to them all the time. Don't give us – don't just give us information. We need tools and resources that help me book appointments. So everything that you do from a marketing standpoint, you got to be thinking in your mind, is this going to help our reps get appointments? Because that's all that matters to us. We need more appointments. If we have appointments, we can tell our story to more people. We'll get more recruits. We'll get more clients. We'll build a big business. And so that's what they've done. They've developed this CRM. They put millions and millions of dollars into this tool. It is as good as any tool that you'll see in the marketplace. You know, but on top of that, wait until you see what's coming. I'm sure they're going to roll it out at the convention. Wait until you see what's coming that is going to help you capture more recruits, capture more clients. The tools that they're going to be adding into the company within the next six months that are going to be included in your POL, Larry, is just mind-blowing. And there is absolutely no excuse for anybody to be able to come into this company and within three to five years build a $250,000, $300,000, $400,000 income if you'll just get up every day and go to work. How is that going to improve things? I mean, you know, because, Brad, I'll tell you, you know, I'm more of a dinosaur than you. And, you know, the idea of going and expecting anything good to come out of the home office that's going to help me running my business is just, like, foreign to me. And, you know, but they've come a long way, you know. And, you know, it's professional now. I mean, the company's on a different scale. And when you go to the convention, I mean, now's the time to reset your expectations about paying attention, I think, at the convention. And expectation, like, you know, they give you these big, thick things of all the new stuff they've got. And, you know, look in there because there's actually stuff that can make a difference for you in your career. It's going to make a difference for somebody. And so how do you think, as somebody who's been behind the scenes talking to them and everything, why are you excited about this making your business able for you to run your business, to do more of the right things quicker, faster, better with these new tools going forward? Well, I think, you know, look, they invest millions of dollars right now into innovation and technology. I don't have millions to invest in innovation and technology, but they do. And they're doing it. And, Larry, I've got to tell you, for years, I mean, I've been in this company for 36 years. For the majority of my career, I honestly felt like, you know, they're not listening. They've got a strategy, and they're employing their strategy, and they're very successful at it. They've built a spectacular business. And I'm just kind of a cog in the wheel. I've just got to figure things out for myself. But in the last few years, I've got to be honest, man, I've been in so many meetings. I was on the phone yesterday with Peter Schneider on a Sunday. We were talking about, you know, moving the business to the next level. And I've spent many hours with Julie and the leadership there. They are listening. They are very responsive right now, right from Glenn Williams on down to what does the field need to help them grow their successful business. And they've spent millions of dollars. And we're already seeing the results of it. If you go on to Pry Social, we use Pry Social every day. We send out on our Facebook group, our team Facebook group, we have a post every day. We go into ChatGPT. We pull up a hashtag and a text line. We take a post off of Pry Social. We have posts that we use. We take the brochures. They've got some great brochures they've made. We do a post on that, and we put it on, and we give it to all of our team. We say, you post this every day. Do your family posts. Do all your other stuff that you do. But at least every day you're going to get a post that will help to brand you or rebrand you in your marketplace. Now, it's not that you're going to get an appointment from doing a post. But when I get an appointment now, someone's immediately going to go to my Facebook page or my Instagram and see who I am. That's my business card. So we use Pry Social to try and feed people's social media platforms so that it helps us get a broader reach for our products and services. And so those are just little things. But I'm telling you, the reason to come, this convention is going to be different than any other. It's not just because we've got our first $6 million earner. And that's not what it's going to be just about. It's going to be a convention of innovation, technology, tools, and resources to help you move your business to the next level. Brad, this is Adam. Another thing we like to touch on on these calls is talk a little bit about what you were doing before Primerica and what your hopes and dreams were at that point and then life after Primerica now, the way you've expanded your vision on what life can be like. Well, Adam, you know, I was a wandering generality before Primerica. You know, I used to watch Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous when I was a teenager, and we grew up on a farm in central Alberta. My parents were dirt farmers, basically. I never remember a time my parents didn't struggle financially growing up. But my dad taught me work ethic. I mean, at 12 years old, I was spending my entire summer sitting on a tractor, you know, cultivating a field and working in the fields. And I hated it back then, but it sure gave me a, you know, work ethic that I could apply to this business. And so, you know, but I used to watch that show. We had seven people living in a 900-square-foot farmhouse. My bedroom was the furnace room, you know, and so, you know, and I had dreams, man. I used to listen to the radio station in Vancouver, and I dreamed of getting out of the farm and one day going to somewhere and being somebody. And I used to watch Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and I would think to myself, what are they doing different than what we're doing? How can they live like that? I think most people watch shows like that or today you get on Instagram and you follow people or you look at Miguel on Instagram and you become envious or almost sometimes people become angry. Oh, this isn't fair. It's not fair. And I'm like, it's not, you know, I never looked at it like this isn't fair that we live like we live and other people can live like they live. I used to always just think they must be doing something different, and that's what I found out. Their daily activities are different. Their thinking is different. Their influence is different. And if you change those things, you change your entire life. And so when I graduated from school, people would always say, what are you going to do? And I would say, I have no idea, but I'm going to be rich. And that was my high school graduation. I'm going to be rich. I don't know what it is, but I am going to find Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And at 22 years old, I got an article that I went to a Tony Robbins seminar. I had no money. I was married with a baby. We had no milk in the fridge. And you can imagine the family reaction when they heard that I was spending my baby's food money to go to a Tony Robbins seminar, but I always believed the answer was out there and that I'm on a quest to try and find the vehicle, the mentor, something that would help me get Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And so I was willing to live in a box if I had to to be able to find that vehicle. And I found this person at Tony Robbins. They gave me an article called How to Build a Life List, and I built my first life list of all the things I want to do, have, achieve, and become before I die because I believe you've got one run around this track. You better make it count. You've got one life to live. Act accordingly. And so I built my life list. What do I want? And I think the problem in society today, most people, what they do is they go get an education, then they go get the best job they can get, and then they try and squeeze the best quality of life out of that paycheck, and usually that's not very good. And I say forget about trying to squeeze the best quality of life out of a paycheck. Figure out what kind of life you want to live, and then find a vehicle to finance that life. And that's exactly what I did. And so I put together this life list. I figured it out. I quantified it. I figured I needed about $30,000 a month to live that life. And I spent two years trying to find something that would pay me $30,000 a month and give me all the free time I needed to go and accomplish all of these adventures I wanted to go and do in my life. And, you know, two years later, I was introduced to a woman who told me she was making $30,000 a month working in A.L. Williams at the time. She'd been here 14 months. And I said, listen, I've been to so many meetings and had people tell me that. She pulled out her check stubs, and the month before, February of 88, she made $32,000, $16,000 bonus and $16,000 in advances. And I said, I'm in. If you're willing to work with someone like me and you think I can make the same amount of money as you, I'm in. All I needed was somebody who was willing to tell me what they did that were making $30,000 a month. And so I got started. And I worked my butt off for five years. I felt like quitting every day. I was paralyzed every morning. And I woke up every single day, had a shower, got dressed, left my house, and went out prospecting, facing my greatest fear and my greatest boogeyman in the world that my insecurities and self-doubts every day kept hitting the pinata. And five years later, you know, I won every trip. I worked hard enough to win the trips. And on one of those trips, I met Andy Young, and we had breakfast together. And Andy and I both lived in Bogota, Colombia. We had something in common. And Andy became my guide for a long, long time. And he taught me double-digit. And he said, if you'll just double-digit, this thing will happen for you. And that's what I did. I sold out to that. And the thing exploded five years into the business. Honestly, I was financially independent. I had a business paying me passive income of, you know, $200,000 without getting out of bed in the morning. And at that moment, I started living my life list. And that was 1993. And for 30 years, 31 years now, I live my life from adventure to adventure. And I'm a photographer. That's my passion. Primerica is not my passion. Primerica finance is my passion. And so that's why I keep doing it because my passions keep growing. I'm heading to Indonesia on Sunday to spend two weeks with one of the best landscape photographers in the world. And we're flying around and taking a boat and traveling from Komodo to the five islands we're hitting to do photography. And that's what I love. And everything that I've got, if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you can see the life that I get to live. Everything is fully financed by Primerica and double-digit recruiting. And I think anybody can have the life that I've got if you just have that desire and you're willing to get up every day and do what needs to be done. All right, man. Let's see if Josh wants to jump in with one more question. Brad, how about talking, you know, let's assume that, you know, somebody is, you know, we're sufficiently motivated. You know, we're showing up. We know the life we want to create. So assuming that's true and let's actually, you know, I'm kind of asking for me right now, Brad. Like you kind of know where my business is right now. Like what do you think is, so once we get recruiting going and we've got that machine, you know, running, what would you say are like the biggest, okay, don't do this, don't get distracted by this or that, you know, stay on the, like what are the pitfalls you've seen people, you know, jump into in their career that you would advise, you know, recruiters to avoid? Well, it's not people, it's I can tell you the mistakes that I made that if I could go back would have really monumental cash flow differences in my business had I avoided the mistakes. A couple of things, you know, is I guess number one is be tolerant of people. And I know you are. You're a, you know, a wonderful person. You love your team. The challenge is, you know, sometimes we want them to win more than they want to win. And that's, you know, that's the challenge. You know, you have to be tolerant of people. You have to be tolerant of people. You have to be tolerant of people. You have to be tolerant of people. You have to be tolerant of people. The challenge is, you know, sometimes we want them to win more than they want to win. And that can create conflict. And I think that, you know, conflicts arise when expectations differ. And a lot of times I want it more for them than they want it for themselves. You know, when I was in Hawaii I got a chance to go golfing with Hector and we spent five hours driving in the golf cart. And at least three times Hector said to me, the one mistake, the one mistake everybody makes is they work with unmotivated people. And, you know, and I think that I spent a large amount of time with unmotivated people trying to motivate them, trying to inspire them, trying to get them to the next level. And it's like pushing a rope, whereas what I should have done is just driven below them. And I think that a lot of times we make the mistake in thinking that the A recruit is our A team. And what we want to do is we want to get that recruit and turn them into something so that they can go out and build something. And the mistake that I've made, I think a lot of people make, is that you, instead of working with that person and building that new direct as your best friend, drive below them. Your best recruit a lot of times is not direct to you. Your best recruit is going to be 20 deep in the leg. And so don't stop going deep. You know, that was a big mistake that I made. Also, never shut your base shop down. I can tell you by experience, I thought I went through a phase in 2012 or 13 where I thought, okay, I got this hierarchy. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to work with the hierarchy. I'm going to get all these people to 10, 20, 30, $40,000 base shops. You know, I ran 100,000 base shop for a period of time. I'm going to get them to that. I know how to do it. And, you know, if we've got all these, I've got 17 directs. If all of them are doing $20,000 a month, you know, I'm going to be just killing it and I don't need to worry about the base shop. And so I shut the base shop down. That was a huge mistake. I'm still paying the price for that. And so never, ever, that's my personal opinion, never, ever shut your base shop down. Your base shop is the vehicle that will continue to produce directs. And so, you know, I would never shut the base shop down. And I think the most important thing is just keep working on your thinking. The world is such an amazing place right now. At your fingertips, right on your phone, you've got a university of resources in front of you. I listen to them. I've got a mindset or a mastermind alliance that I built that, you know, Napoleon Hill talks about in Think and Grow Rich. I've got a mastermind alliance of people like Larry and Hector Lamarck and many people, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Alex Hermosi and all these different people in the world who are willing to feed into my thinking that allow me to think the way that I've got to think so that I can attract the right people and grow my business. And so, you know, never feel like you've ever made it. I know you don't. And, you know, and how can we when there's somebody just crossing over 6 million, you know, so. That was awesome, Brett. Thank you. Adam, let me jump in with two things. First of all, part of what Brad is saying is related to actually the guy I've got on my podcast this week because you can have two things and you can do it well. Like you hear Brad, you know, so much the thing about the Bay Shop, Brad, is we had the idea, you know, if you're going to be putting time into other things, you can't have a Bay Shop. But Willie has shown you can run a monster Bay Shop and, you know, travel the world, be gone three weeks at a time because, you know, you can phone call back in. You can be, you know, Zoomed back into your full-timer meeting. You know, it's like you're never gone. There's ways of working that out. And what this guy did that I have on today, he's actually my dentist. He runs a major dental practice here in South Florida, first class. But he started a craft beer business and they're in 450 locations in South Florida and just got a contract four months ago with Publix for 250 stores. I mean it's a monster operation and it's solely owned. It's like almost unbelievably rare to be solely owned and have that kind of thing going on. But he's got one full blast. And so you can do these things. There are ideas and ways and techniques that you can have double, triple passions in your life, but not let Primerica go down the drain. Now, Josh, I've got something for you I wanted to say from your recruiting tips. And this is the answer to so many things, Brad, about getting off track. And that is let your recruiting, if you have your number, I always try to keep my eye on my North Star. Because that was, you know, my, what was the main thing? It could only be one bullseye. You know, how would I judge myself that I was doing the job, number one job I was supposed to be doing? And that was recruiting growth. And I never got off track from recruiting growth because grow or die. And I didn't want to die. And so the way, Josh, I decided who to spend time with was who's helping me. I don't care how nice they are, how much of a friend they are, if they're not going to help me grow my recruiting this month, I don't have time for them. And I don't care if a guy's 20 levels down, if he's going to help me grow my recruiting this month, he's recruiting, he's my buddy this month. And so that's how I kept my mind on the most important things, did not get off track, was keeping the recruiting growth number, like not, you know, if the recruiting's not growing, my fault. And so I don't want to be the fault, the blame for the business going down this month. So I've got to drive recruiting up. I can't do it by myself. I've got to have help. And whoever helped me do that, that's who I'm going to be spending time with this month. I don't know if that's any help to you, but that's how I did it. Anyway, great job this morning. That's my final word, Adam. All right, we'll let Josh and Brad leave your final word. Josh, you want to leave your final word, and then we'll let Brad leave his final word. This was great. Let's get big. All right, Brad, final word. I love what Larry just said. I think you've got to be fickle with your BFF. You know, my best friend was always the person who was helping me grow my business. And, you know, if you help me this month but you're not helping me next month, I'm going to find a new best friend. And I think that's it. You run with the people who want to run with you. All right, thanks, everybody. Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Josh. Great call this morning. We'll talk to you guys soon. Keep that momentum going in the convention. Have a great week, and we'll talk to everybody soon. Thanks for being on, guys. Have a great day.