BHC 4-21-2014 - Larry Weidel ON WINNING

BHC 4-21-2014
Larry:
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Good morning! Monday, April 21st. I’ve got some good news for everybody. It’s WIDE OPEN AT
THE TOP! The only place it’s crowded is at the bottom, and with people trying to cut corners, look for
ways to get to the top without working, looking for new and small methods that they can believe in and
convince themselves will give them big income. Because of that, there’s always a heavier desire for
people to not work and to get the big reward. As a result, it is WIDE OPEN AT THE TOP.
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We have with us, as a follow up to the fantastic call, I want to thank Bill and Sam, Giancarlo and Bruce,
great job last week. And one of the things Bruce said was, he constantly challenges people to tell him
how they are going to get the big income. How can you make $100,000 in the base? What does that
look like? What’s it gonna take? What kind of activity? Just to challenge them to have it worked out in
their mind because until you have the picture, you can’t build anything.
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The new skyscraper, The Freedom Tower, in New York, it’s taken awhile to build it, but not nearly as
long as it took to get all the plans and decide who was going to build it, get all the permits get everything
lined up. Most of the time, since 2001, has been spent on that. So, until you get yourself thinking
specifically about what you’re going to do, you’re never going to do it.
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So, Alex is going to remove some of the mystery this morning about how “doable” and it is WIDE
OPEN at the top. If that’s what you’re excited for. And, it is okay to come in and do this thing for paper
route money, shoe shine money, survival money, just to get by, if that’s what you want to do. Hey!
Fantastic.
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But do us all a favor, don’t ask for a big leadership position and don’t try and recruit a whole lotta
people and then try and cut corners BECAUSE when you do that, the people who come in, they want to
do big things and they want to follow a leader who’s motivated to move up and up. It comes in to
deciding, this is an opportunity for you to do something fun, exciting, exhilarating with your life. Now,
for some people, that might be working one hour a week and being able to survive. That might be
exhilarating. Whatever your dream is, decide what you want, and get your message and your activity to
line up with it so you can make it happen.
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There’s realities you gotta face. A small message is going to give you a small result. It’s going to give
you a small organization. And, maybe that’s what you want. You just need to know the parallels. To do
it big, you can be somebody, you can change your life. This is going to give you the chance to build it
big.
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Art Williams, we’re here today because Art Williams started this thing with a “Do it Big” “Be
Somebody” “You Can Change Your Life” “Do Something Great” “You can be financially independent.”
That’s the message that launched the company.
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See it’s like activity. A little activity can’t help but give you a little result. BIG activity: you don’t do
BIG activity because somebody punishes you. You do BIG activity because it opens the big door to a
big new way of life, creates big energy, big excitement, and big income. AND, since most people are
lazy, just doing the BIG activity is the first step you can do to start separating yourself from the masses.
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Let’s face it, all fear of the “DO IT BIG” message is related to the fear of work. People love to do the
small message because it implies they can become financially independent easy. AND, folks, if you
could do it easy, we’d all be doing it.
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And, it’s a waste of time to debate it. Because people in that mode are in a denial mode, it just doesn’t
work. Our job, since we don’t know who the next generation of Alex Makanvand and Charlemont
Genestin and in the last 3 years of being on The Big Hitters call. You know Charla started as a truck
driver. He came to this thing as a truck driver.
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He learned the basics, he got his income up to $75k. He got excited about the “Do It Big, Build It Big”
message. And then, jumped in, started picking the brains of the Big Hitters, started implementing, he
heard on this call, made sure his top people were listening every week so they’d be on the same wave
length. He’s driven his income up $100k every year. Now, he’s up around $400k / $450k something
like that. His income has jumped over $350k three years plugging in to the Big Hitter call and in a
period of time where most of, you know the company’s been in a slow growth.
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But because he’s on fire, he’s driven, he’s turned his organization into a “fast growth” business. That’s
you can do. Why can you do that? Because it’s WIDE OPEN AT THE TOP.
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The thing is, we’re going to be examples. Of working it hard, doing it big, inspiring people to greatness.
Or are we going to be examples of just getting’ by and going through the motions. You know you are
what you are. If you want to do great things in life, you’re excited about the possibility of going from
financial independence at a chance of becoming stone wealthy. Like Charla is doing. Folks, it’s WIDE
OPEN AT THE TOP.
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Alex takes it upon himself to go, not only is he one of our newest million dollar earners for the company,
you know like all the big leaders, he really is concerned and really wants to give back and help the
people coming behind him. And because of that, when they call on him, it’s like a 15-hour-round trip
from the time he drives to the airport, flies back and forth, he spends 15 hours every time they have an
MIT to take advantage of a lousy, stinky, miserable 15 minutes (Hopefully, Karen, this will go in your
notes so they can read it.) that they give, at the Fall gives, Alex to speak.
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But he doesn’t complain about his time slot. He spends the 15 hours to take his 15 minutes so he knows
that all of those new RVPs will hear a “Do It Big” message as they start their careers. It’s that important
to him. He feels that strongly about the company. They same way you guys do. So, I appreciate Alex
and I appreciate what he does. He’s got a huge heart. The payoff for him and his family is just, folks
it’s gone from great to unlimited. It’s just a matter of seeing what unlimited is going to turn into.
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And Alex is a guy who doesn’t take it for granted. He’s totally grateful. He’s totally wrapped up his life
in other people’s success. And really shows it. So, Alex, glad to have you on with us this morning to
keep the theme of “Doing It Big” “Making Your Life Count” “Doing Something Specific and Big” that
will give you something specific and big in income so you can inspire the people coming behind you
and prove to them that it works, it’s not a theory. Alex, thanks for being with us and we’re really curious
what you tell those guys at MIT.
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Alex:
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Hey Larry. Thank you buddy, thanks for that introduction. Man! Do I owe you some money. Next
time I see you, just remind me, I gotta slip you a couple of “C” notes there. It helps to pay people,
they’ll always say the nicest things about you.
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Talking about this subject of Big Base Shop, Larry. It’s very much like discussing religion or politics.
You know, everybody believes in what they believe and it is what it is. You’re not gonna get someone to
change their thinking. Those of us who are proponents of big base shops, we feel we need to get our
voice out there so that that new person, maybe takes this side as well as the side of “Well, let’s just go
out small, stay small, let’s promote small.”
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Again, anything that I say today, please, I don’t want anybody to take it as disrespectful. Everybody is
welcome to build it the way you want to build it, and that’s fine. The one thing I always remember is
that AT&T commercial. There is a man who is interviewing these little kids who are maybe four and
five years old. He asks them, “Which is better – bigger or smaller?” And even little kids can figure it
out that bigger is better. So I kind of try to oversimplify it maybe and say it like that.
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There’s two things I’d like to talk about time permitting. One is what is a big base shop and how do you
do it? How do you build one of these things? And then, we also have to talk about the other side of
things, why do people NOT end up building one of these things. You know $50,000 or bigger.
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For the sake of argument, let’s not talk about $75,000 or $100,000 base shop right now. We don’t want
too many people to shut down mentally thinking “Well that’s ridiculous. You don’t need that. Or,
there’s no way that I could do that.”
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That brings me to my first point. I think most people, Larry, 2 things happen. They are born into a
culture that doesn’t ever talk about that, it doesn’t promote that, it actually pooh poohs that. It says,
“Well that’s not right. If you’re building a big base shop, you must be doing something wrong. You
must be doing something underhanded, you must be holding people back.” Either they put a negative
spin on it or it’s never discussed. It’s never talked about.
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If you’re born into a particular culture, you tend to adopt that culture. Then, the belief side of someone
saying, “There’s no way that I could ever build a 50,000 or bigger base shop.” Believe it or not, I used
to think that. There was a time in my life when I would look at people that had monster base shops, and
I used to think to myself, “There’s no way that I could build that.” Or, I would look at someone making
a million dollars or $2 million in my own upline, I didn’t have to go very far, all I had to do was look up
a little bit. I was making $100,000 or $200,000 and I would say to myself, “There is absolutely no
way.”
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A lot of it is belief and a lot of it is culture. So which one of those Larry do you want us to talk about?
Do you want us to talk about the “How” or do you want us to talk about the “Why people don’t do it?”
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Larry:
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I think there are a million reasons why. When you get down to “How” now something can happen. I
think we will go “How” if we have a choice. You know, I remember being at Fast Start Schools in
Atlanta, GA. Art would say, “Weidel, get over here and shake so and so’s, hand. He made $35,000 last
month.” I would look at my hand. I would look at his hand. We would shake and the thought would go
through my head, “I’m shaking the hand of someone making $35,000.” Then, I’d look at my hand when
it came back like it had been transformed or something. I’d look at the guy and he was the same old
knucklehead that I’d known for two or three years.
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Going to big events, getting around these people, that’s why big events are so important early in your
career, so you can start to realize we’re all people and what other people have done, you can do. It’s
very liberating to finally understand “Great ideas don’t care who has them.”
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You start realizing the reality is nobody really works as hard as they can consistently, as hard as they
want themselves to work. Everybody doubts themselves. Everybody is a human being. And you don’t
have to be perfect. And the guys who are up there are doubting themselves, trying to get themselves to
work harder. You know, full of questions, making mistakes. But they are focused, and they do do a
bunch of work in the direction of BIG and it pays off.
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That is why you can do it too. Other people have done it. I got to the point where I understood, if
somebody was beating me it was because they understood something, they were saying something, they
were using ideas that I wasn’t using, that I didn’t know about. As soon as I picked their brain, that’s
why I started doing these calls way back in the beginning of time. If I’d picked the brains of the biggest
people.
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Look at Charlemont! That’s what Charlemont is doing. So what Alex is telling you, what Charlemont is
doing, we’ve all done this stuff.
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None of us came out of a cave with our own game plan. Or came down from the heavens with a silver
spoon in our mouth or came out of the country club in the sky.
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We all had to put it together step by step, taking ideas, picking the brains of each other. And, yes let’s
get into the “How” Alex.
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Alex:
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All right. Perfect. Step #1, if anyone has ever done it before in the history of the company, then you can
do it. That’s the first thing.
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Let’s talk about belief for just a moment before we get into the physical how to. I hear this all the time.
“Alex, I don’t have the belief.” “I don’t have the belief. How do I get the belief?” Well, it’s a funny
thing about belief. You don’t just wake up one day and you have belief. It doesn’t work that way. You
don’t go from NOT believing to BELIEVING. It’s a process.
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The process is fraught with hard work, failure, set backs, defeats, taking incremental steps forward.
Taking maybe 3 steps forwards and 4 steps backwards, at least it feels like that sometimes. So if you’re
searching for belief and you’re sitting around so you can absorb it by osmosis, sitting on a book or
you’re sitting on some material, and you’re hoping to absorb it, it doesn’t work that way.
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Belief comes from sheer hard work – from sheer determination. Getting out there and doing it. So,
these “How to” steps I am about to discuss, these are for people who are willing to get up in the
morning, get dressed, hopefully take a shower, be out of the house by about 9 or 10 at the latest. Now,
I’m talking about full timers. And pound it ‘til they pass out. ‘til 11 PM or midnight. Now, first things
first.
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ALEX TELLS YOU HOW TO BUILD A BASE SHOP
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1. Put a schedule together. You cannot ever build something big if you’re haphazardly and
spasmodically doing things. You have to have goals. You have to have your plan of action of how
you’re going to accomplish those goals. And you have to have your daily schedule.
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So, your goal is to have a $50,000 base shop, let’s say by the end of the year. I think we’re in a good
place of the year right now, middle April, we can all say, everybody on this call, everybody in this
company, the 95,000 agents in this company can all say that by the end of this year “My goal is to have a
$50,000 base shop.”
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Now, let’s break that down. You’re not going to have a $50,000 base shop with you and your two guys.
Okay, it’s not your desire to have a $50,000 base shop alone. It’s not your grit and determination alone
that’s going to get you …..
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I get this all the time. Alex, we’re at $20,000! We’re going to do $30,000, $40,000. Well, you are if
you push the crap out of your people. And if you’ve got the riding crop and you’re just beating the crap
out of everybody. But that’s NOT the right way. Because once you let up and once you let go, they’re
going to let up. Once you squeeze the life out of them, they’re going to be dead.
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2. You need the right people. A $50,000 base shop has at least five master trainers. FIVE MASTER
TRAINERS. Each trainer, you can call them team captains, you can call them trainers, producers,
you can call them legs, right, I think that’s the old expression everybody uses. You need five legs
that are producing $10,000 of premium. Now when you think of it that way, that’s a no brainer!
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If you have the five people and they’d be doing the $10,000, okay? You’d have the $50,000. Now, you
yourself, you’re the RVP, you could be one of those legs, you could be producing $10,000. And I’m not
talking about $10,000 personal. Although that would be great if you could do that. But you could build
legs that are producing $10,000. It’s really that simple. It’s not easy. But it’s really, really that simple.
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In reality, $10,000 is not enough for someone to go RVP. I know some people say, “If you have a pulse
and you can do $10,000 one time, you can go RVP.” That’s just the beginnings of someone showing
themselves and someone saying, “Hey! Look at me. I think I can put some premium together, put some
recruits together. You got all of that.”
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3. Now the $10,000 premium, how do you get that? That comes from recruiting. Now, let me say
something real quick. You don’t recruit people just to get premium. But premium comes from
recruiting people. You have to lead from the front. You have to set the example. You have to
produce personally.
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This is the one thing, or one of many things, that was pounded into my head that you cannot get other
people to do something that you are not doing yourself.
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Or that you’ve never done. Either you must be doing it right now or you must have a proven track
record of having done it in the past.
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So, if you want to get others to produce a $10,000 leg, YOU have to start by doing a $10,000 leg. If you
want others to do $3, $4, $5,000 of personal premium month in, month out, YOU have to do personal
premium $4 - $5,000.
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One of my claims to fame is that I did 10 – 12 sales, personally, for about 66 months of my career. For
five years and six months, I wrote about 10 – 12 personal sales.
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4. Deliver on my promise of “Let’s do it together.” Now, these do not count the sales that I was with
somebody and I helped them close a sale. I don’t count those. Because if you are licensed and I am
with you, I let you sign the sale. When I recruit you I tell you that I am going to be with you, I am
going to help you, I’m going to be with you every step of the way. Don’t worry about it. We’re
going to walk through the valley of the shadow of death together. I’m not going to let you fail.
Your name is on it. My name is on this thing. So together there is absolutely no way.
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When I say these things to somebody, then I have to deliver on my promise. My promise of “Let’s do it
together. I’m going to show you. All you have to do is ‘to show up, initially.’” So, there’s a lot that
goes in to producing $4 - $5,000 worth of premium every month personally. But it all begins with that.
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5. Personally producing. Now again, you’re not producing personally for the sake of producing
personally. Yes, you make your highest commissions when you make the sale personally. That’s, of
course, wonderful. You can actually make a living that way. But you’re doing it for when the right
people come across you, and the right people come on board, they can watch you and they can see
you do it.
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See if you’re recruiting me and I see you producing 10 sales a month, I’m going to go out and do 10
sales in a month. If I see you sitting around doing nothing, then I’m probably going to just fade away
and just quietly disappear from your team. Okay? So it all starts with doing it personally. You start
doing $5,000 personally, you’re going to get others to do $5,000 personally. You’re going to start doing
$10k in your leg, you’re going to get others to start doing $10k in their leg.
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6. Get new people on board. How do you do that? It all goes back to recruiting. You have to recruit so
many people, and I’m not going to give you a specific number because everybody’s number is going
to be different. You’re going to have to recruit so many people in order to be able to get so many of
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them in school. Then so many are going to finish the class. Then so many are going to get their
licenses. They’re going to pass their tests and they’re going to get their licenses.
So you know, that out of every 10 people that you recruit, you’re going to get 2, or 3, or 4 of them
ultimately licensed. Now, you cannot just get people licensed. You have to get them to be productive.
And I believe a lot of that has to do with the culture. That’s where the culture comes in. People are
coming to your Saturday training. And all you’re doing is droning on and on and on. You’re reading out
of a book and you’re discussing philosophies and things like that.
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The new person doesn’t see other people producing and writing sales, getting on stage and being
recognized. Every Saturday, we recognize, “Okay, who did 1 sale? Come on stage.” “Who did 2
sales?” Who did 3 sales?” “Who did 4 sales?” That week, we talk about that. We encourage that.
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The brand new person who is sitting in the room is getting a lot of messages that are not coming at him
directly. He’s watching somebody else who started a week ago that did 5 training sales. And if that
person is the right person, they’re going to be all jazzed up. They’re going to be all excited. They’re
going to say, “Man! I wanna be that guy on stage. And I wanna get that candy bar. I wanna get that tshirt.”
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So let me stop for a second, Larry. How do you think we’re doing so far?
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Larry:
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I love it. And I hope that as people are listening, we always have more people listening that are fighting
with you in their minds, as you say these things, then you do have people saying, “Yeah, I’m getting
super excited.” That’s exactly what I do.
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For those of you that are out there, you wanna do it big, but you’re holding back, you’re resisting
because you just think it’s impossible. Let me ask you this. If it was impossible, how would all of us
have figured it out and made it true? You won’t go through the maze the same way any of us did. You
know, we all go through it differently. But, you gotta gear up, you gotta get more done in a day than
you’re doing now. There’s gotta be some new things, some new energy. You gotta do things that most
people won’t do.
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You gotta get more done than most people would do. And so the first thing, you gotta open your mind
up when you hear Alex and you hear the other guys. You’re not going to get the answer you’re looking
for by being resistant. And coming up with reasons why that’s wrong and why you can’t do it.
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You’ve gotta shift to say, “Okay, this is foreign to me.” Like Alex said when he got started, he looked at
his uplines and thought “I can never imagine, I don’t think I could ever do it.” BUT, he kept plowing
head and figured out how to do it and worked his way up to it. You can do the same thing. But not as
long as you’re stuck in the mud shaking your head “No!” when you hear this stuff.
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So the one thing I want them to start thinking about is saying, “I gotta figure out how I can get going
like Alex got himself going.” THAT is the big breakthrough.
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Some of you are one big breakthrough away from changing your life. And the great thing is, not only
will it change your life and your family’s life, you’ll be able to reach 10’s of thousands. You can help
10’s of thousands of people in the marketplace who would never have been reached had you not let
yourself go through the change, turn yourself around, and started going from a stubborn mule to an
aspiring frontrunner, motivating people to greatness.
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It’s WIDE OPEN AT THE TOP for inspirational, heroic leaders who will do something big and catch the
imagination of other people. People are looking for great leaders to follow. And that can be you, if you
give yourself a chance.
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So Alex, I just wanted to throw that in there. And to ask you, when you originally ramped up and got
into this groove, was it easy, was it hard, were you brought in to in by your trainer? When you say the
environment, talk about how you went through that “ramp up” in your activity from being an outsider,
you don’t know how to do this, you’re hearing about it, and then all of a sudden, maybe you’re running
with someone else. Now you’re running yourself and training others. How about that transition?
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Alex:
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Larry, we hear a lot of rhetoric in Primerica. All of it is true. But, unfortunately, we don’t get past the
rhetoric. It’s that simple. We hear, “You’re only one recruit away from a major explosion.” Everybody
says it. It sounds good. It brings a lot of hope to you when you hear that.
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But really, how many people are following their own advice? Here’s what happened to me. In our
business, we just kept going, and we just kept going, and we just kept going. And I kept going and
putting in the hours and I kept putting in the time. Spending time with people.
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A lot of that, I wasn’t attracting the right people. I hadn’t developed myself yet. And, by the way, I’m
still working on that. I’m a work in process. I’ve only gone a little bit in that journey of self
improvement.
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A lot of times we don’t work on ourselves so that when the right person does come along, we don’t even
know that that’s the right person. We’re trained to be micro managing, too busy looking down, we’re
too busy with the daily stuff that we don’t really see that “Hey! This person could potentially be the
person that’s going to take you to the next level.”
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So remember something, “You’re never going to get big on your own.” “You’ve gotta set your ego
aside.” “You’ve gotta stop thinking that it’s ME, ME, ME. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it.” If
anything you are just the catalyst. If anything, you are just the person who keeps singing the right tune
so that the right people will come along.
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Ego plays a huge part in our business. A large ego keeps people broke. And what happens is, people,
instead of singing the same tune “We’re going to do it right. We’re going to do it with integrity.”
“We’re going to do it big.” Instead of continuing to sing that tune until the right people come along,
what everybody does, they start to lower their standards.
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They say, “Well, I can’t get anybody to build a big base shop, so let me lower that. Let me cater to the
lowest common denominator.” I intimidate these guys. You know I would hate to be John and Rick and
Glenn. They’re not running a company, they’re running a country. The things that they must put up
with. The people who call and complain and moan about things. I don’t know how these guys handle it.
They gotta get canonized, they gotta get sainthood, someday, right? These guys, in terms of the kind of
crap they gotta put up with.
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Instead of everybody coming in and saying, “Look, we’re going to build a $50,000 base shop.” It’s not
a question of days, or weeks, or months. This thing might take years. This thing is measured in years.
Sometimes, it’s measured by decades. If changing you was that easy. If everybody would come in, they
would read a book, they would change themselves, botta bing, botta boom. And then they would just
keep growing, there’d be no problem.
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But there’s the problem. Right? We’re all trying to change other people and we’re not working on
ourselves. We don’t want to change ourselves. So, the process that you asked me about, it’s all about a
journey of awareness, of realizing who you are, what you are, why you don’t think big base shop is
good. Why you are not attracting people who want to do it big.
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And then, don’t just sit there and have a paralysis of analysis, don’t just sit there 24/7 and think this
thing through. This is a doing man’s business, not a thinking man’s business. You gotta get out there
and you gotta everyday, you’ve gotta be shaking every tree, beating every bush, and looking for the right
people. Because when you find the right people, find the right people, you’re gonna think that you’ve
died and gone to heaven.
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Stop thinking that you, yourself, and your two guys are going to build a $50,000 base shop. Of course
it’s not going to happen. But you recruit a Larry Weidel, you recruit a Rick Susie, you recruit a Hector
LaMarque, you recruit, okay. And some of the people you recruit, they may not be the ones, but they’re
going to lead you to the ones.
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So, if you’re lowering your standards, it’s never going to happen. It’s never going to happen. Okay?
So, what did I do? I kept working. And I kept talking about the same issues. I kept talking about the
same principles. Okay?
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One more thing I’m going to talk about is what I call “thermostat settings.” What happens to people is,
you can make money in Primerica. You can go out and write some sales. And, boom! You get a check.
You can recruit a couple of people, they write some sales and all of a sudden somebody like me, who
never brought home more than $3 - $4,000 a month is making $3 - $4,000 a week, or makes $3 - $4,000
a day.
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Well this stuff can mess up your thinking. It’s heady stuff. It really screws up your head. So, what
people do, you know myself included. Larry, you probably did this sometime yourself, the minute
things get going, the minute things start to look good, we switch off and we let up. Our thermostat shuts
down. Then, our income starts to drop again. And we say, “Oh my gosh, I gotta go out.” We get back
in and we start ramping up. It takes time to heat things up. It takes time to ramp things up. Get that
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momentum going. We get it going, we get it going, we get it going. Things get good and then we relax
and we let up.
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So, one of the secrets of building and maintaining a base shop is that you the leader, you the RVP, you
cannot show doubt, you cannot show hurt, and you cannot show signs of slowing down. It’s AMAZING
to me, it’s shocking to me how everybody gets it going, and then everybody AHHHHH, kind of sits back
and takes that sigh of relief. You know we gotta continue to do it despite the results good or bad, despite
those results we gotta stay the course and keep doing this thing.
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Larry:
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Hey, one thing Alex. Everybody expects, and by the way I want to remind those of you who don’t
know, a couple of the most popular videos on my YouTube Channel - Weidel Academy is with Alex.
Alex and I got together and Alex went through “Overcoming Recruiting Objections.”
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So, if you’re getting fired up and you’re saying to yourself, “I’m going to really gear up my recruiting
and I need to brush up on my ‘Overcoming Recruiting Objections’” That’s 2 or 3, I forget how many we
did Alex, but those are some of the most popular ones we ever did on Weidel Academy. They are out
there now. If you want to look them up.
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By the way, I keep forgetting to mention this. I just started about 2 years ago, after working with the Big
Hitters, I made a list of the top 10 things I noticed that Big Hitters did that most people don’t. The
marks of big hitters because it comes in to what they do. Because everybody has 24 hours in the day
and you get results from what you do and what you get done in 24 hours.
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So somehow, these people who started just like you propelled themselves up the ladder, not only to go to
the top, stay at the top, and these are the top 10 characteristics that I noticed from talking with them on
the call and then one on one behind the scenes. So I did a series of that, webinars, and put it in six parts.
I put out the last 2 weeks, I put the first two parts out and I guess this week, we’ll put the third. It’s kind
of like an online course. A six-part, over six weeks. That’s on Weidel on Winning. To people who are
signed up for my Weidel on Winning email, the insider preview, have already been getting it. And
they’ve already been getting hundreds of views. Thought I mention that on here. Since it came up,
Alex.
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But anybody who wants to throw a question at Alex, you can text it to me. Alex, if people, until they
have gone through it, they expect it to be a pretty process. They expect to go out, sure, I’ll go out and
I’ll do 10 appointments but dadgum it, I expect to get a Robert Redford-style recruit by the end of the
day.
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What they get is somebody that looks like Barney Fife. Who just got thrown out of his trailer. But, hey
it’s the only person who has any interest. But what we used to say is “You can’t lower your standards.
But you gotta go with what you get. We used to say, “Every dud knows a stud.” And you can
accumulate a lot of people who don’t do anything. As long as they are referring you and they can pay
for you to have them around, where they are taking you two people who are more in the market.
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You know, almost every Super Star in the company was recruited by somebody who was not here a
month later or two months later. Almost everybody. Like Frank Dillon was recruited by a kid who
came in and JR had given them maps of the metropolitan New York City area and pinpointed all these
locations. This is where we want offices, so this kid took that map in and showed it to Frank and said,
“You know, we’re in a race here for outlets, all the prime outlets. If you get in, you’re good enough.
You can get one of these or you can get a bunch of these. It’s just a matter of how motivated you are.”
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This kid, who did not last in the business 3 more weeks, recruited Frank Dillon. Because Ron Schmidt
Jr was smart enough to program him, now he was a dummy. He should have stayed. Ron Schmidt Jr
did the best thing he could to get the kid to stay and to have a career by putting him on an activity that
would recruit more quality recruits. The kid just didn’t have any staying power.
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But the thing you said, that happens over and over. It’s not the first person, we used to have a saying,
“It’s four deep to a stud.” Sometimes you have to go from this guy to that guy, it’s like digging for gold.
Sometimes, it four people on the ground. From this to break through the crust. It’s not always pretty.
And the situations you’re going to say, “I can’t believe I put myself through this.”
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My first 3 recruits when I went to North Carolina was a 52-year-old, at the time I was 28, so I thought of
her as a spinster, now that I’m 66, I think of her as a young lady, a 52-year-old single school teacher who
was looking for companionship. I remember after, we supposedly, we were going to see some of her
friends and of course, they didn’t show up. She said, “Well, maybe we could go for a pizza.” That was
my first, and I thought, “Oh lord, what have I gotten myself into?” That was my first field training in
North Carolina. I moved my family up there. I was living on fumes. I had no income.
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I could have died a pauper’s death. This is my first field training. The other guy I recruited was a 24year-old single guy back from the Army. He had no real leads. Other single guys who were back from
the Army.
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And then another guy was a referral. He was an hour and a half away in another town. His first sale, his
paycheck was $41. I felt so bad to give him a $41 check, I wrote on it, “They’ll get bigger.” You know
it’s just like a knucklehead factory. It seems like dumb, dumb, dumb. But 21 months later, I had 700
people who came out for an Art Williams talk. You know 9 months later, we were still stumbling around
to where we had 2 or 3 recruits and that was like Oct, Nov. 12 months after that, we recruited 300
people in a month. We went from 3 to 300 in 12 months.
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It doesn’t always look like the Glory Road when you’re starting, but you’ve got to dive in and stay with
it, being confident of the fact, “I’m paying my price. I’m following a proven track record that other
people have done and I’m not going to lift my head up until I win.”
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You’ve got to have that perspective, or you’re never going to last. Don’t you think, Alex?
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Alex:
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Two Kinds of People + MISTAKES
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Right. Yeah, you know, I think there are two kinds of people who come in to Primerica. One kind that
is not the right person so you have to quickly identify that, and before that person quits, you have to
make sure that they lead you to someone else. And that’s exactly what you were talking about. You
might have to go generations deep before you find the right person.
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Then, there’s the person that comes in, and they’re going to become the right person, but they don’t look
like the right person and they don’t sound like the right person in the beginning. The way you manage
those people is you have to have the type of environment that those people feel good about and they
want to stick around and they want to be around. There are so many dynamics here. You’re constantly
looking for people, constantly parsing through people and identifying them and categorizing them, and
by the way, sometimes you’re going to be right and sometimes you’re going to be wrong.
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I’d rather be right and wrong about people than continue to invest my time in the same two people. I
think that’s one of the biggest reasons people don’t grow. They potluck and they hang around and they
go to movies. And you have them over to your house and you go to their house. These are people who
are never going to do it. Those are non doers.
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DON’T MISTAKE LEADERSHIP WITH FRIENDSHIP
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People mistake leadership with friendship. People mistake the fact that a leader has to just parse through
and go “Next.” “Next.” “Next, AH, maybe I have somebody here. Oops, I was wrong. Oops, I thought
he was right. But that guy’s not the right guy. That’s okay.” “Next.” “Next.” “Next.” “Next.” And
while he’s doing that, he’s loving on everybody and he’s treating everybody like gold.
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Now, I just sounded like I contradicted myself. Maybe you heard me say one thing while I said
something else. I always tell people to treat everyone special. Treat everyone like gold and treat
everyone as though they’re going to be the next RVP.
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DON’T RIDE THE NEW RECRUIT TO DEATH
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Having said that, I also encourage people to quickly listen to what people say, watch them, and quickly
decide “Is this person going to potentially be the right person, or not?” If they’re not the right person,
you don’t blow them out of the water, you don’t disrespect them, you don’t tell them to go away. You
still encourage them to come around, you still encourage them to bring people, you still encourage them
to get licensed and write premium.
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I think that is one of the biggest leadership mistakes that people make. They ride the new recruit to
death. You gotta look down sometimes and see that the horse you are riding is dead and dismount. You
know, huge mistake.
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THE MISTAKE OF INTEGRITY
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The other mistake is the mistake of integrity. You’ll never get big, people so misunderstand Sales &
Marketing, Sales & Marketing can be the most honorable profession in the world if done properly. And
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99.9% of salespeople in the world are just bad salespeople. They’re just bad. They say anything, Say
whatever it takes.
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You know, look, if you are a scoundrel, if you are winking and nodding your way through Primerica,
you’re going to surround yourself with a bunch of scoundrels and of thieves. That’s not how to get big.
You might get big temporarily. It may look like it’s getting big, but it’s going to crumble like a house of
cards. So, integrity is such a huge part.
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Part of integrity is what you say – the message you deliver. But I think most of integrity is delivered
nonverbally. People watch how you behave. People watch how you live your life. People watch how
you treat people. People watch how you are when you think no one is watching. I think that’s such a
huge part of our business. Because at the end of the day, we are in the people business.
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We teach people, “You should not care about what people think about you.” That’s true, because if you
care, then you’re going to get paralyzed. But what people think about you is a huge part of whether
you’re going to build a big business or not. I hope that makes sense.
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Larry:
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How did you think in terms of yourself, as you were climbing the ladder? How focused were you on
numbers and growing your numbers?
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Did you think about growing your activity first, your numbers, or how did you keep yourself mentally
organized, on track, day by day, week by week, through the month?
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GROWING YOUR ACTIVITY
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Alex:
!
It was very simple. Very simple. Rick Susie taught me this. He said, “Alex, you gotta beat 2 numbers.
You gotta beat your month before, and you gotta beat the same month last year.”
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So everybody on this call, pull up your numbers from April 2013 and make sure you beat that number.
Then, last month. If you incrementally grow. He always taught me, “Don’t worry about if you’re at
$20,000 to do $80,000. But if you’re at $20,000, do $22,000, then $25,000, then $27,000, then $32,000,
then $28,000, then $35,000, then $33,000, then $38,000.”
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If you grow incrementally... If you grow by one sale… if you grow by $1,000 every month, you’ll be
the biggest guy in the company. And I was stupid enough to believe him, of course, right? I’m dumb
enough to be coachable. So, heck yeah. We were so focused on production. We are so focused on the
numbers.
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You know, I am not one who is going to tell you, “Oh, we’re not salespeople. This isn’t about selling.
This is about relationship building.” Well everything is selling. Even relationship building is selling.
So, I don’t kid myself. I don’t fool myself. I am in a sales and marketing arena.
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We were studying Hopkins until Hopkins came out of our ears. We knew how to close a sale. We knew
how to close a recruit. We knew how to get an IBA. We knew how to take a brand new person and sit
down with them and get them to make some phone calls. Set some appointments and BOOM! I would
go on a sale with you, I would recruit that sale. Get a sale with you and I would take that sale and
recruit them and I would go out with them and I would do the same.
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I wasn’t busy, I was BUSY. I had too many appointments. I was starting to wonder how I’m going to
handle all these things. What a great problem to have.
!
So did we focus on production? ABSOLUTELY. The activity came. The activity is simple. You leave
the house at 9 AM and don’t get home until midnight. You do that six days a week. Sometimes 7 days a
week. You don’t go home for lunch. Look nothing good happens at home. Everybody who has a small
base shop, chances are they’re spending most of their time either at home or at the office. Nothing good
happens at home, nothing good happens at the office. You gotta be in the field.
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Larry:
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And Alex, I’d like to point out to everybody who’s sitting there saying “I don’t want to work that hard.
Sounds like …” The reason you’re doing it is not because you gotta break free of the “employee
mentality” that when you hear stuff like this you say, “Oh you know, he’s trying to push me.” No
dumbass.
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This is what Alex did for himself to get ahead. This is how we compress timeframes. You’ve gotta at
least, if you’re going to get big, let go of the employee mentality. To where every time you talk about
work you think you’re being punished.
!
The chance to get up early and work late and cram in all this activity was Alex’s. He did it because he
saw, “I can compress my timeframes and I don’t have to drag this out for 5 or 10 years. If I’m good
enough, I can compress this into 5 or 10 months. If I’m good enough…”
!
Hey! How long would it have taken Charlemont Genestin, down there in north Miami, to gradually, 5 or
10% to grow his income from $75,000 up to over $400,000? That would have taken forever – a
lifetime. But he’s been working around the clock with his guys. He sees a pot of gold and he’s going to
race to it. He’s not going to say, “Well, I’m not going to break a sweat.”
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You’re not even thinking about breaking a sweat. You’re not even thinking about the hours. Because
you’re racing. I was like, I needed to turn my life around like immediately. I needed a bombshell. I
needed an explosion in my income. I was so far down the hole in debt and disaster, that I needed a
miracle.
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That’s why I grabbed on to the Compound and the Fast Start, Four Point Game Plan, Race People to
District, because that was my compounding piece. I needed to race. I needed to make things happen in
a hurry. I’m thinking about how fast I can get there and change my life forever. Not like, “Oh! I gotta
go on another appointment tonight.”
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This is you and your dumbass “employee thinking” mode. You gotta break, somebody needs to come in
and slap your head to get you to wake up and get out of that so you can go out and do something great.
Come over here. I’ll be glad to do it for you if you need somebody. That’s when you need coaching
sometimes, just to shake your ass up because you’re losing your future by holding back, for nothing!
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You’re not getting any advantage. You’ve held back up to this point. What in the world good has it
done for you? Do you agree with that Alex?
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Alex:
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Absolutely! You know what Larry, if you never talk about big base shops and big hierarchies and big
organizations, then I believe no one in your organization, none of your people are going to stand a
chance because they are born into a culture of poverty mentality, and scarcity mentality.
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Art Williams did not start this company for it to be a j-o-b. This can be a job and it can be a pretty cushy
job. You could make $50, $80, $100,000 a year as an RVP; write some sales; get some assets under
management; you know that’s fine.
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Again, if we’re trying to give a trophy to everybody that’s playing the game, fine, no problem. Look, I
don’t disrespect someone who wants to do it small. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s a crying
shame to take a Ferrari, to take a Lamborghini, a Bugatti, and drive it 10 miles an hour. It’s such a
crying shame. Can you do it? Of course you can do it.
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I don’t want to disrespect my brethren in the business. I love this thing. I love everybody in the
company. I don’t care what you think of me. I still love you and I still respect you, even if you want to
do it small. But we have a chance here. We have a shot to build it.
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Larry:
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Alex, there’s degrees of small. Here’s the thing. Forget everybody’s philosophy. You can do more, if
your philosophy is small or big, who gives a crap? The thing is, “Are you going to do more?” “Are you
gonna to grow with that philosophy?”
!
I don’t care what your philosophy is, if you don’t grow with it, your philosophy stinks. Your philosophy
is supposed to grow. If it’s small, big, medium. Securities emphasis strong, recruit-driven strong, this
driven strong, that strong, whatever your philosophy, training, in the field, not in the field, whatever it is.
Shut up and grow your business. Don’t use your philosophy as something to debate about. Use your
philosophy to grow your business. That’s how you prove the validity of this thing and even if it’s small
you can do big or small.
!
Here’s why none of us have any excuse not to grow every month. Every month, you get more
experience. Every month you get more clients, you get more recruits, and you have experience starting
the next month that you didn’t have to start the last month.
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You’ve got more resources and unless you’ve been asleep at the switch, if you use those new people
those new clients, new referrals, that new experience, that new insight that you picked up, people are
listening to these calls every week, you’re supposed to be learning something.
!
People are going to Fast Start Schools, they’re supposed to be learning something. People are going out
in the field training, you know field trainers, they learn something every time they go out. We’re
supposed to be learning and improving and developing our skill.
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Folks, unless the RVP is asleep at the switch, there is really no excuse not to grow your business every
single month. Or at least every quarter – averaging out holidays and those things, if you want excuses.
Tell me why people should accept lack of growth?
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I don’t think there is any excuse for lack of growth other than to sleep at the switch. Because we get
more experienced. More people. More things to work with. We should be able to get more done every
month. What do you think Alex, am I off on that?
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Alex:
!
No, man, you hit it right on the head and you know, we’re out of time. I just want to add one other
thing. You’re so dead on. If your system is working, GREAT. If it’s not working, CHANGE IT.
!
But your system has to work, not just for you. You can’t be the emperor and the leader, the supreme
leader and make money and other people aren’t making money. Look, Rick Susie has 17 people making
over $500k a year, he has 7 international sales directors.
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If I was in some other hierarchy where there was a supreme leader who made all the money, I’d be
making $40, $50, $80, $100k. But thank God. Thank God that I came into this hierarchy where he
taught me that, I have not worked now for 14 years. You wanna hear that I worked my tail off for 5, 6, 7
years and that’s all you wanna hear? That’s fine. But I haven’t worked now for 14 – 15 years. And, I’m
only 22 years old. So, I don’t know how that math works out on that.
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Hey, the system works. More and more people are crossing the half a million dollar mark. More and
more people are headed towards the million dollar mark. A lot of people are taking advantage of this
system. BUILD IT BIG.
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I love what you said. Is it working? GREAT! KEEP DOING IT!
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Larry
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Yeah! Believe in small if you want. But just be “big” small. You know be bigger small. You know,
GROW!
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Grow the darn thing. Let’s face it. FUN comes from growing. And you can have fun whatever your
philosophy is.
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DO IT BIG EVERYBODY! THERE’S ROOM AT THE TOP!
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Alex, you knocked it out of the park! Thanks so much.
!
Alex:
!
See you later.
Thanks buddy!
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