HL December 18,12

The speaker is addressing the topic of how to promote Regional Vice Presidents (RVPs) correctly in order to build a successful business. They emphasize the importance of ensuring that potential RVPs are capable of transferring their skills and knowledge to others in their business. The speaker also highlights the need for RVPs to have a team of independent individuals who can achieve similar results and handle their own business. They stress the importance of focusing on prospecting, recruiting, and field training, rather than getting caught up in administrative tasks. The speaker shares their own experience of how their business grew significantly once they had someone handling administration full-time. They emphasize the importance of providing effective training and meetings that empower individuals to achieve results and make money. The speaker expresses a dislike for motivational stories and emphasizes the importance of practical training. Hey, good day, everybody. Hey, listen, I did this talk not too long ago, but I wanted to repeat it because right now, a lot of you are working really hard to promote RVPs. A lot of you are wanting to become RVPs, and I wanted to speak to how to do it correctly, how to do it so that you build a business that grows going forward, and that the people that you have that become RVPs succeed. That's one of the most important things you can do is how to make a great regional vice president promotion and how to go regional vice president correctly so that you set yourself up in a way that you can really succeed long range because you see a lot of RVPs go and they don't do it correctly, and then they end up either struggling and just kind of hang in there, or they wash out of the business. And what we don't want is we don't want anybody washing out of the business, and the best way to do that is to make sure that you do it correctly. And there's a right way to go RVP, and then there's an incorrect way to go RVP, and they both have consequences. And so you gotta make sure you don't get emotional about this, but you do it in such a way that you give everybody the best possible chance to have a really fabulous career long range. That's always been my philosophy. My goal is not just to promote RVPs. My goal is for RVPs that could make money, grow their business, accomplish their goals and dreams, and create a business ultimately for me and my family that is a money machine, and that's what you wanna do. And it's not about holding people back, and a lot of people have a lot of hangups about holding people back. It's really more about doing things correctly so that people can succeed. It's not a question of holding back as much as it's a question of what's in the best interest of the person going forward so that they can have the best possible chance to be successful long range. That's always been my intent in how to promote RVP. So how you go RVP and how you promote RVPs will dramatically affect your long range success, and especially everyone's income. And so people have asked me a lot, how should someone go RVP? My answer's simple. The promoting RVP, let's say you're a regional leader in my base shop, I'm the promoting RVP. You're getting ready to go RVP, you're working on it, you're on your RVP run if you will. To me, you have to prove that you're capable first of transferring the skills and the knowledge that you've learned to those people in your business. So if you don't have other people that are becoming successful within your regional leader base shop that are independent of you, that know how to recruit, know how to close business, they know how to train their people, they know how to get results on a consistent basis, then that person doesn't have any business becoming an RVP. So these are the things you have to ask. One, can that person get consistently great results personally? If you can't get consistently good results personally, you absolutely have no business becoming an RVP because you're gonna starve to death. So for me, back when I was building my business, my goal every month personally was to have three direct recruits and close at least 10 live sales plus the other stuff that goes along with that. We'll just say live sales for, that's what I focused on early on in my career. So three recruits, 10 live sales. And I wasn't just recruiting three people either. I was recruiting three people that I found and then I was recruiting four, five, six, seven, eight, maybe sometimes 10 people for people that I was training as well. So it was a lot of recruiting going on and a lot of transactions going on, okay? But the main thing is can you get great results personally? That's one, I have to see that. If I'm not seeing that, if you've been for this year, you closed 12 transactions, right? One a month, you're not an RVP, you have no business being an RVP, you can't be training anybody. You don't even know what the heck you're doing yet, okay? Number two, does that person, that regional leader, have multiple directs who are capable of getting similar results, like results, and are developing their own team completely independently of their regional leader? So what I wanna see is you're going RVP, I wanna see you have three or four, maybe five people that are functioning independently of you that you've trained and they know what they're doing, they're closing sales, they're recruiting people, they're getting results all by themselves without your help. If you haven't produced three or four or five at least of those people in your business, when you go RVP, you're gonna struggle like crazy. It means you haven't learned the most basic, most important lesson in building a Primerica business and that is transferring the skills and knowledge that you have to people within your business. If you don't have the ability to do that, and the way we know that you have the ability to do that is you have those three or four or five completely independent people that are writing business, recruiting people, closing sales, training their team without you physically being involved. That's what I wanna see because then I know for sure that you can do it and then when you RVP, you can continue to do that, you can grow your business, you can get wide, you can build a successful, if you can't do that, if you don't have that, then you have no business becoming an RVP. It's really that simple, okay? Look, so if they can't do those things, you just simply, you shouldn't be an RVP. You're gonna struggle, most likely you're gonna fail and it's only a matter of time that you're gonna wash out of the business. The problem with promoting RVPs before they've proven these two things is when they go RVP, they take on a lot more responsibility. So once you go RVP, now what do you have to do? You have to pay rent. You now have to process your own business. Can't rely on my secretary anymore. You now have to be responsible for your entire team and your QBI and all that, right? Now you have to handle all the pending business. You have to handle all of the licensing. You have to handle all the meetings and training. You have to handle your QBI. You have to process all the securities transactions. You have to be handling compliance issues. You have to handle all the issues regarding the home office. So unless that person has built a team and is getting overrides and stuff, right, after giving up their replacement, they have a team still there so they can do some business, right? 10, 15, 20,000 or something like that. Unless they're making money, right, that new RVP can't afford office help, which you really should have. When you go RVP, you should be in a position that you could afford to hire help. And if you can't afford to hire help, again, you have no business being an RVP. So now if you can't hire help and you're having to do all this stuff yourself, you're totally distracted. You're not, you can't focus on prospecting and recruiting and training people, which is how you grow your business and your income because you're doing all this secretarial work. So in my own situation, this is how I did, right? This is how I went RVP, 1985, July of 85. I was doing 50 apps a month. I gave up three full-time, direct, fully-trained, independent agents as my replacement. And they were totally competent and productive. But I exploded, right, my business, when Jan, my wife, quit her job and took over 100% of all the administration, right, that I was doing that distracted me and really grew my business. And in my first year as an RVP, while doing all my own administration, I made $86,000 because I was still doing this. But at the end of 86, in September, Jan took over my business, 100% of the administration. So since September of 1986, I haven't spent a second, and I literally mean that, on anything administratively, not a second, nothing, zero, nada, okay? I have not done any administrative work. Every bit of my energy has been directed towards recruiting, training, and developing people. I have not done any administration work. Now, you RVPs, you're listening to me, right? Hear what I'm saying here. None, zero, nada, no administration. Once I got Jan going full-time and I had somebody in there doing that, right? And if you can have your spouse do that, right, whether it's your husband or your wife, that's fine. That's great. If not, then you need to afford a bill to hire one. So I was focusing on all the right things, how to put on great training, great meetings. The next year, right, that very next year, so September of 86, when Jan became my full-time office manager, right, that next year, my income went from $86,000 to $409,000. Why? Because all I focused on, prospecting, recruiting, field training, and putting on great meetings. Let me repeat that. Prospecting, recruiting, field training, putting on great meetings, right, great training. It exploded my business and exploded my income. I went from $86,000 in 1986 in income to $409,000 in 1987. The next year, my income went from $409,087 to $855,000 in 1988, okay? And to date, we've earned over $60 million in Prime America, okay, so that was because of that focus. And I promise you, those of you hearing me, if you're really honest, are you putting 100% of your focus on prospecting, recruiting, and field training? My guess is a big, giant no, which is why your business isn't growing like you want it to grow, okay? Not to mention putting on great training meetings. I mean, meetings that have meet, that people can take that information that they get from the meeting and go out and use it to recruit in close people, close transactions, not to motivate them. I am against motivation. I think it's a crock, okay? I think training people how to get results so they make money is how you build a great Prime America business, not motivation, not another friggin' story. I'm so sick of going to meetings and hearing stories being told and nobody teaching how they did the business, how they built the business, how they got their income to 200, 500, a million dollars. How did you do that? That's what people need to know. They don't need another story. In my 30-year Prime America experience, rarely, if ever, does anyone who goes out small, right, goes RVP in a small way, without proving they learned how to develop independent and self-sufficient people, they almost never build a big business. Never, and they never make big money, okay? Been doing this a long time, it's like the number of people that have done that is virtually zero, okay? I'm not saying it's impossible because nothing's impossible, but to build it big going out small, it's very, very, very rare, and I'm serious about winning big, and I wouldn't play those odds, and I'm serious about helping people win big. So holding people to a higher standard is smart if you're thinking long-term. Look, in what real, legitimate business does someone who hasn't proven their ability to do a job well and correctly ever get promoted to a regional vice president position? What company in America, what company in the world would ever promote somebody that hasn't proven themselves first? Nowhere, but people do it every day in Prime America. My intention's always been to do whatever's necessary to help people succeed in the long-term, so it never makes sense to make decisions that don't recognize that intention. So if you take a few more months or a year or two to get it right, what is that in the long-term scheme of things? Folks, time goes by so fast, you can't, look, I started doing Prime America in January of 1984, okay? It's almost 30 years, that time just flew by. It went by so fast. So even if it would take me another year or two to get it right, what is that in the long-term scheme of things, right? The bottom line is you wanna be successful a long time. Look, it takes six or eight years to become an attorney, right? You gotta go to undergraduate, and then you gotta go to law school, blah, blah, blah. It takes eight to 12 years to become a doctor, depending on the specialty, right? It takes four years to get an undergraduate degree, and another two to four years to get a master's in a doctorate, even then there's no guarantee of a job or significant income. But at Prime America, if you do it right, there's no limit to what you can earn. Look at your ability to transfer, look at your ability to transfer your skill sets and knowledge of how to do the business so as to get results, recruits and sales to your people is the number one prognosticator, right, of your success in Prime America. If you can't do that well before you go RVP, if you can't prove that you can do that well before you go RVP, and the proof is you have multiple people independently building their businesses, right, it's highly, highly, highly unlikely with all of the added responsibility you're gonna have after you get your RVP contract, right, that you're gonna be able to do that, folks. Look, this may not be a popular talk, right, and there might be some of you who don't like this talk. I'm just telling you the truth. If you can, people bead you lines of BS all day long about how easy everything is, there's nothing easy about being successful in anything. So I know this talk isn't popular, right? But let me leave you with this. Can you think of one great leader who doesn't have multiple leaders that he or she has developed either directly or indirectly in Prime America? I can't, I can't think of anybody who has anybody of any merit, right, that has a significant business. Everybody that has significant businesses in Prime America has multiple strong leaders within that business. And the real telltale sign of a great leader, the greatest leaders, what they do is they develop leaders who develop leaders who develop leaders, okay? That's what they do. They develop leaders, look, I developed Rick Susie, Rick developed the Youngers, the Youngers developed Mark Rose and Gerfine, et cetera, right? And the list goes on and on, but that's when you know you're a leader, that you've developed leaders who develop leaders who develop leaders. And it starts, see, all of that ability to do that starts with how you go RVP, it starts there. So you can go right or you can go wrong, but you gotta live with the consequences. I think you gotta think this one very, very carefully, both the RVP who's promoting and the RVPs being promoted. Think about this, this is the kind of thing that you need to make the right choice. Talk to you next week.