HL March 9,13

The main idea of this information is that people's beliefs dictate their behavior, and it is important to focus on what works rather than labeling things as good or bad. The speaker emphasizes the significance of awareness and personal growth in achieving success. He also mentions that complaining and negativity stem from factors such as lack of effort and results, rather than the company itself. Hey, good day everybody, listen, another great little message from Anthony Lanario, I think that's how you pronounce his name, it's a difficult word. Anyways, listen, the real reason you are negative, all right, at a certain point in life you begin to uncover some truths about human behavior, you start to understand why people behave the way they do, and you see clearly the beliefs that underlie those behaviors. So what you start, if you are paying attention to people, okay, and what their actions are, what you begin to realize is you can start seeing what they believe in by what they do, what their real beliefs are by what they do, all right. People who are extremely confident and optimistic and believe in themselves behave in an entirely different way than people who are unconfident, right, or lack confidence and are not prepared and are pessimistic, if you will, okay. So they just behave in a completely different way, and as a result, their beliefs, as you can see, always dictate their behavior. Your beliefs are 100% dictating behavior, right. So if you believe, you know, it's no use recruiting people because most people don't work out anyway, so I'll just do it myself, that's a belief a lot of people in America have or in all kinds of businesses have. Well, if you believe that, then you're not going to work on your leadership skills, you're not going to work on your recruiting skills. Why bother, right? Why try to get better in those areas, right, at training and developing people if you're going to do it yourself? There's no reason to. So you see these people, they don't grow in their leadership, they don't grow in their training ability, they don't grow because they just do it themselves. So that has a consequence. That belief drives that behavior, where if you have a belief like I did that training and developing people, recruiting people that are motivated and putting a lot of effort into them at some point has a potential to lead to a Rick Susie or Chris Howard or, you know, a Mark and Sue Younger or somebody like that, right, that has the ability to lead to that. If you have that belief, then you're looking for those people and you're working harder than heck at trying to grow your leadership skills, your training skills, all that stuff, right, your people skills, you're doing that, and then that leads to a different result, right? So one leads to one result where you just make a living, the other one leads to the result of having massive passive income that allows you to have an amazing life. But there are two beliefs. The thing is, it's not that one's right or wrong, and that's something that people do a lot. They pass judgment, that's the wrong way, this is the right way. It's really, the really way to look at that and the way to look at life is something either works or doesn't work, right? Instead of saying that's bad or that's good, right, why not that doesn't work and that one works? Look at it that way. What gets the best results? What works, right? Does, you know, being rude to people and offensive work? A lot of people are like that, but does it work really? If you want people on your side, if you want, you know, better service, if you want better anything, does being rude or obnoxious work? No. Is it bad? It's not that it's bad, it's that it doesn't work, right? Being prepared and really proficient, right, allows you to get better results. So that works. Being unprepared, lacking discipline, right, gets poor results. But that doesn't work. So is one bad and one good? No. It's one works, one doesn't work. So look at the way you are with your spouse, for example, right? Is the way you are with your spouse working? How do we know if it's working? Well, your spouse is reciprocating love and caring and, you know, wanting to take care of that sort of thing. So if your spouse is offering that up to you, then what you're doing with them is working. If they're, you know, short with you or they can't wait for you to leave the house or whatever, then whatever you're doing isn't working, okay? So it's not bad or good, it's just either working or not working. And I think that's a better way to go through life, is looking at what works and what doesn't work, right? Like, you know, does taking drugs work and drinking alcohol to excess work? No, it doesn't work because it creates lots of problems, right? So you've got to just look at, is this working for me? Is the way I'm believing and the way I'm behaving right now, is it working for me? If it isn't, then you've got to think about making some changes, okay? Look, most people don't make a conscious choice to be negative. They don't wake up one day and decide they're going to be a force for negativity and darkness or they're going to ruin the people around them. You know, when you run into a rude person, they don't wake up that day saying, I'm going to ruin John's day today, right? That's not what people do. They just do what they do because of their awareness level, right? If they knew better, they'd do better. Or even if they know better but they don't do it, it still reeks of a low level of awareness for that person, okay? So I assume that everyone is acting with what they believe are the best intentions. But the human ego is a fragile thing, and some bad behavior is really an attempt to protect that ego. Look, this is one thing I've learned. This is one of the most important things I've learned in my life, okay, that's helped me deal with people, lots of people, which I have a big business. I deal with lots of people, lots of different egos, right? I know a lot of people. And the best thing that I've learned, one of the best things, is that people can only operate at their current level of awareness, no more, no less. So this is why growing you and your awareness level is critical to your success because people can only do what they're aware of doing. Like one of the reasons that Primerica for me, right, for building my business for me, has honestly been, for the most part, relatively straightforward, simple, and easy. It hasn't been a struggle, right? And the reason for that is that I worked so hard on preparing myself before I got here. I was a fanatical personal development student. Before I got to Primerica, 1979, from 1979 to 1984, five years, I had gone to countless seminars. I read hundreds and hundreds of books on all kinds of personal development. I spent thousands of dollars on seminars, tapes, audios, all kinds of stuff to prepare myself. When I got here, my awareness level relative to sales, relative to people skills, relative to time management, relative to leadership, relative to the way that modeling and mimicking successful people and what they do and how they speak, I had a high level of awareness by the time I started Primerica. And so that made it a lot easier for me to build a Primerica business relatively quickly. That's how I mentioned on last week's call how I was able to go from zero to 600 sales a month through first and doing 150 to 250 sales in my Bay Shop in that fifth year of my business. I was able to do that because I had a very high level of awareness relative to the average person that got into Primerica, into our business. And so really, it's not that I'm smarter or better or more capable. It's that I was more aware. I had put the time in to raise my awareness level in those areas I mentioned. And as a result, it made the process infinitely easier than it would have been had I not had that level of awareness. Most of you, especially if you're new, your awareness level relative to all those things is relatively low. But it doesn't have to stay there. It doesn't have to remain low. How you invest your time and energy and how you manage your time and your energy and where you invest it is going to determine how quickly that can change. Or if you don't do anything to grow yourself, then it doesn't ever change. You just keep running on a treadmill. Things don't get any better. A lot of people have been in Primerica for a long time, and they've basically been making the same amount of income for years and years. They know how to do that. But because they don't grow in those critical areas, they don't really pay attention to growing and getting better at those areas, they have a rough time retaining people. They have a rough time leading people. They have a rough time getting people to stick because their people skills aren't good or whatever. But their level of awareness relative to the important parts of Primerica, of building a sales force, is low. What you want to do if you want to be successful, you've got to grow you and you've got to grow your awareness level relative to your area of expertise, if you will, or your chosen field. He says, when I hear sales people complain about their company, and I hear people complain about our company from time to time, I listen to find the kernel of truth underlying their negativity. There's always a little bit of truth to it about what they're saying, even when they have a lot of complaints. I say they're complaining about the compensation plan has problems, or that there's a cultural issue that's an obstacle to real success, or because I'm a female, or I'm a minority, or because I didn't go to a certain college, or whatever. They think that's their obstacle to real success, or that their competitors are tough, or that they sell on price, and our prices are too high. But the negativity and the complaining is always accompanied by other factors. Primarily those factors are a lack of effort on their part, which leads to a lack of results. Look, the real reason that people complain, the real reason you're negative has nothing to do with your company. Look, we have a great company. So many awesome, perfect companies? No, of course not. It doesn't exist on this planet. But we have a great company. The reason that people are negative has nothing to do with our company. It's a diversion from what's really broken. And what's really broken is a lack of prospecting effort, a lack of getting out and letting people know what you do, what you can do for them, what your opportunity has for them, what it is that you are about, and how you can help them accomplish whatever goals they have when it comes to their financial life, whether it's product-wise or whether it's an opportunity. What's really broken is a lack of prospecting effort. If you're hearing this, you know, you know, you know if you're really prospecting all the time or you're not. You know. You know when you do it or don't do it. You know those of you that aren't doing well, you don't really prospect much at all, if at all, or it's haphazard. It's not directed. You're not working on getting better at it. You're not putting yourself in a position that you could potentially get rejected, right? You're not doing it. You know it. Stop blaming your upline or your spouse is not supportive or your kids or whatever, right? You know what the real reason is. Look, it never fails that when I find a negative person, that I also find they have no pipeline to speak of. In other words, one of the things that I always had, I was always prospecting and I had a yellow legal pad, right? And I would, if I met you, I would write, you got your name and number, I would write down your name and number. I would write down what we talked about. I would write down anything I found out. Oh yeah, John is married to Mary. They have two kids, Bill and Sue. And, you know, their ages are 10 and 12. And he works for, you know, Frito-Lay. And she works, she's a school teacher. And, you know, I'd have every bit of information I could possibly have on that person, okay? And I would keep track, so I would write their name, their number, all that information. I would leave, you know, five, six, seven lines so I could write comments. And then when I'm going to follow up with them, and then so that way when I did follow up, I could say, so how's Sue doing? And how are the kids doing? And I would know what to talk about and what they did. And I would, if I could find out anything about what they liked or what they liked to do in their spare time, maybe they were Laker fans or maybe they were golf fans or maybe they were, you know, whatever. It didn't really matter what it was. But I'd find out as much as I possibly could so that I could find some common ground with them and then I could refer to that when I spoke with them. If I could get their email address, man, I would always try to, today I would get their email address so I could, you know, correspond with them and say hello and thank them for their time or whatever. You know, you've got to be very careful about what you do via email. But, you know, if you just say, hi, I just really enjoyed meeting you. I'd love to talk to you again soon if you don't mind. What's a good time to call or something like that? I would, you know, that's not, you're not soliciting anything. You're just, you know, saying a thank you note. Or if I could get their address, I'd send them an actual thank you note, whatever. But I would be prospecting. I would be adding names. Every day, everywhere I went, I annoyed the heck out of Jan and my son, Dak, and Janae. We'd be out anywhere. I'd go, I'd be talking to people. I'd be getting names and numbers. I'd be talking, talking, talking, talking. Always prospecting. Always prospecting. Always looking for great people. Always looking for somebody that could lead me to somebody or something, right? Always prospecting. So I had this pipeline. I usually had, you know, 50, 75, 100 names that I was working and adding to all the time. And, you know, it was just always having a big pipeline where I'd have things to do, people to talk to, people to go see, people to call to set up appointments, right? The salesperson's negativity, folks, really is a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from their lack of effort at prospecting. If you became a master self-disciplined prospector and you had those seven fundamentals down that I talk about incessantly, right, if you had the seven fundamentals down and you prospected every day, everywhere you went incessantly with the sole purpose of finding somebody that could turn into an RVP and you never deviated from that, there's no way that you wouldn't have massive success over time. The problem is you stopped doing it. You know it. I know it. Your spouse knows it. You're upline, you're downline. Everyone knows whether you're prospecting or not because they know when you're not, you don't bring new people to the meetings, you don't have appointments, your numbers don't show up on the board. They know. Everyone knows if you're on it or not. Look, these people that complain, right, their complaints have nothing whatsoever to do with their ability to prospect. You can prospect even if your compensation plan is pathetic. There's no reason to fight over money that no one has yet earned, right? We don't have that problem. We have a fantastic compensation program for somebody that will actually prospect and work. In fact, you're better off prospecting and winning opportunities and using your results to bargain for better compensation, right? Look, if we grow our organization and all of us become massive fantastic prospectors and results-oriented people and we grew the production like we can grow it as a company, right, if you really grew it, if all of a sudden we got growth going, 25%, 30% growth going in the company, right, overall, we would get more compensation. We would get better products. We would get better support from the home office because they would have the money to do it with. There would be money to do that with. Look, your compensation plan isn't so big an obstacle that you can't move it from on top of the telephone and start dialing people, calling people, prospecting. Look, you can prospect and build your pipeline even if your operations, even if the company is struggling, right, to execute your trades and your transactions. They're not, but you could still do it. No one wants to sell something that won't or can't be delivered, but you help your company. You're going to help our company. You're going to help your company if you're not in Prime America by building the business and winning the opportunities that generate the profits that make it easier to improve their execution, not by starving the company. If you starve the company, go, I'll show you. I'll go broke. I won't build a bay shop. I won't prospect. I won't recruit directs. I'll show you. That's ridiculous. I see people doing that. I got people in my business doing that right now. They're not doing it to think they're hurting somebody else, but they're really hurting themselves. There's no reason to starve the company of revenue and profit. Look, if you grow, you make it easier for your company to offer more features and benefits, better trips, better products, better support, better technology stuff that they do. All that costs money, folks. The company has to make a profit to offer you that stuff. It doesn't come out of thin air. Look, you can prospect and generate opportunities even when your competitors are selling price to a market that wants to buy price. If you lose a transaction on the price, maybe it's you, or maybe there's something that your effort can teach your company. You can prospect regardless of how your competitors behave. Look, your competitors have nothing to do with you prospecting and building your business. You can look at them and say, oh, they're doing this or that. It doesn't matter what they're doing. It only matters what you're doing. Look, you don't lose before you create an opportunity. You create opportunities by prospecting. Every opportunity that you want to have, opportunity to get a promotion, opportunity to make more money, opportunity to grow your business, opportunities all come from prospecting. You're not going to grow your business unless you become mega, laser-like focused on prospecting, all of you. Everything that you want, assuming you know what you're doing, assuming you have those seven fundamentals, everything you want, recognition, income, security, whatever, okay, all is going to come from the level of prospecting you engage in. Look, most negativity is an excuse, folks. It's a diversion. Lack of prospecting is rock-solid evidence that your complaints are a diversion from the real problem, your lack of effort in prospecting. I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but folks, I want to make sure you get this because a lot of you, a lot of people, are blaming other people for their situation, their circumstance, but you don't need to go any further than the mirror, folks. It's your lack of effort in prospecting. Lack of results come from a lack of prospecting. Negativity can also be a way that the ego protects itself from failure. So people get negative because they know they're not doing well, so they're lashing out against somebody or something, the company, their upline, their spouse, something. So it protects them from being responsible for the failure. Look, when you lose, when you fail, it's a very human thing to find some reason for the failure that absolves you of your responsibility. It couldn't be your fault, could it? Look, I've observed this truth. The more negative one is about their own company, the further they are from making their numbers. Look, people who are growing their businesses and making money rarely, if ever, complain. It's always the people who aren't doing the work that are doing all the complaining. Look, it's not that there's not a kernel of truth in the complaints of the negative salespeople. Sometimes there's a kernel of truth, but the negative salesperson doesn't exist for the top 20% of the people in any business. Look, it's just that the top 20% don't let those issues prevent them from prospecting, selling, and recruiting. They don't let that be a downer and stop them from doing what it is they need to do. They know that the grass only looks greener from the other side and that the company across the street has its challenges too. There's no perfect companies out there. They don't exist to a different set of challenges perhaps, but challenges nonetheless. They sell, they make their number, and they let things sort themselves out. Look, negativity is a diversion from the lack of results that one's getting. It does nothing to improve your results, and I promise you you'll find plenty to be negative about in your next job if you end up leaving this. You're going to find other things to be complaining about. But the lack of results will follow you until you take ownership and responsibility for those results. In the end, when you see other people making $1 million or $2 million a year or making $50,000 a month or $20,000 a month and you're not, could it be you? Could it be you? Come on. If there are other people succeeding, it has to be you. Not that you're destined to stay there. You're only destined to stay there if you don't grow yourself and you don't improve your skills and you don't improve your knowledge. You don't improve your prospecting, your self-discipline. You relegate yourself to that place by doing that. Look, your negativity will never improve your sales results. If I thought there was any upside to being negative, I'd be negative nonstop. But there's none. There's no upside to being negative. Zero, nada, nada. I made a decision in 1979. I sent a tweet out. I made a decision in 1979 that I was going to be the most positive person that I would ever meet in my life. That's a conscious decision I made. To look at the silver lining in everything. To look that every adversity has its equal or greater benefit. This is the key. This is the gotcha. If you're looking for it, those of you that have challenges in your life, if you look back on those challenges, if you're really honest, you can see that that thing that seemed to be a challenge or a negativity in your life ended up helping you in the future by making better decisions and not repeating whatever that mistake might have been. But being negative doesn't help. So stop looking for the perfect business. It's a fantasy that doesn't exist. Instead, focus on what's right. Look at our company. We have great products, great products that help people. We have an F&A, which is an amazing tool to enable people to put together a plan that can allow them to get where they want to get financially. We have ownership where you can own your code number and own your business with a $99 investment. It's ridiculous. We have a fantastic compensation for people who are builders. If you're a builder, we have amazing comp. We have great back office support. Not perfect, but great back office support. And they're always improving. They're always improving their technology. Look, they'll be just moving into a brand-new facility, state-of-the-art everything. All that's going to help you to grow your business. We have excellent incentives, trips, amazing trips to amazing places, places that you would never go on your own, that the majority of people in Prime America would never ever even go to. We have an increasing stock price. Our stock's going up, which speaks to the value of our business and how great our business model is. That stock would not be as strong as it is if we didn't have a fantastic business opportunity, folks, that solved problems for people. Think about the negative people you know. Do they produce the best results? Or do more positive people produce better results? Are the most negative salespeople in your company the top 20%? Right? Are the most negative sales and recruiters the top 20%? Of course they are not. Or are they the salespeople struggling to produce results? Why would you be complaining if you're killing it and you're doing all what you're supposed to and you're growing your business, you're making money, what are you complaining about? The only ones that complain are the ones that don't do it. Are the issues your company faces really what prevents you from selling? If so, is that evidenced by your tremendous effort? Come on. Look, it couldn't be better right now. People are scared to death. More people are unemployed. More people are making less money. More people are struggling financially than ever in my lifetime. If you can't recruit people in this environment, man, you might as well just go get a job at the post office, folks. It's an amazing environment to build a business in. Now, does that mean it's not going to have its challenges? Of course it's going to have its challenges, but my goodness, we have all the answers to the issues that people are facing financially for the 98% of the people in this country. We have the answer. Getting out of debt, saving more money, all the things that we do is the answer. That F&A is phenomenal. So who's really responsible for your effort and your results? If you were honest here, you'd observe and change. Or if you're like most negative people, you'll keep complaining, keep looking outside of yourself and your actions and your performance as to why you're not doing well. Wake up and prospect, folks. Wake up and start doing what you need to do. Oh, you don't really want to do it, but who wants to do the hard work that it takes to succeed? Nobody really wants to. You've got to look at what's the payoff for doing it. In our instance, it's building an amazing business that puts off massive passive cash flow that allows you to live with an amazing amount of freedom in your life. That's what it does. That's what doing all this stuff does. That's what prospecting incessantly. That's what prospecting with self-discipline. That's what getting after it does. That's what working on yourself and growing your skills and your knowledge does. It puts you in a position to win, to change your life, to do something great. Don't pass it up, man. Start prospecting. Wake up and prospect.