How Selling Insurance Saved My Business!

Getting into this, you got into this for the money. Everybody does. Everyone takes a side hustle for the money. Sure. Then, when you realize, like, okay, this aligns with my values, like, I'm helping people. It's changing lives. It's actually helping families. It's providing security. It's a good feeling. That's how you know you're on the right path. All right. Welcome to True Talk. I got a special guest with me today, Randall Baum. How we doing, Randall? Doing all right. Yeah. Appreciate you coming up, dude. Happy to be here. I know it's a little colder than home for you. That's a fact. Yes. I see you're rocking the AmeriCo shirt. You're at a ton of AmeriCo, which we'll talk about. What I really want to do, Randall, is get into your story, how you found FFL. It's funny because the past couple of weeks, we've had people with no sales experience on, but you've been in mortgages, correct? Yes. How long were you in mortgages for, Randall? I'm still in mortgages. You still are? Okay. When did you get started? 2015. Okay. What led you to that business? That would have been, I was top dog over at Wells Fargo, consumer finance, and I just was looking for something that was bigger, greater at that time, and mortgage seemed like that was the move. Got it. How long were you at Wells Fargo for? Eight years. Yeah. What'd you do there? Ran branches. I did mostly up on sales toward the end. Okay. You've kind of always been in sales? Most of my career, aside from when I was running a mortgage, like actual in-person branches at the bank, it's all been phone sales. Got it. So you're like, perfect for us now. So have you ever gone out in the home and met with clients? Oh, yeah. I've sold solar. I did that. I've done that. I run a few businesses. So in home, I've never really liked. When I first started in 08, outbound dialing, I was having clients drive locally in up to three hours, bring in all their documents, and then sell them in person. Got it. You like the phone sales more. Love it. Because, yeah, we can help so many more people on the phone versus just having to outbound dial locally, no CRM, manual dials, and just having people come in. So we can reach a lot more people nationally. So you said 2015, you jumped from Wells Fargo to mortgages? Yes. What was that like? It was good. I knew nothing about mortgages really. I had a mortgage at the time, but I didn't know why it took so long to close a loan. The loans that we did over there were everything but mortgage over at Wells. So I remember being in my old VP, my old vice president's office almost weekly and frustrated like, hey, I have all these loans in the pipe. I was funding them out. And I was like, I know I'm going to be at the top, but I don't understand why it's taking so long to fund a loan. I was used to something signing and funding a day later. Right, right. So you were doing a lot of personal loans, stuff like that at Wells Fargo, business loans? Consumer credit cards, personal loans. So quick turnaround. Very quick, yeah. So what was the holdup with the mortgages? What did you learn? You got to be patient with operations, and there's a lot involved. A lot of clients, even today, they don't understand the mortgage process, and they don't understand how to clear a lien on title, what may be on there, that there's delays potentially around the appraisal, repairs, stuff like that. Okay. And you were there for how long selling mortgages? First company would have been Loan Depot, so I was there for four and a half years. I've moved around a little bit. I've opened my own branch, and then I'm in the process of doing that again and partnering with one of the largest brokerages in the country, where I'm going to be able to build an internal insurance team through them. So run a branch, buy my leads, sell mortgages, cross-sell my own clients, mortgage protection, payment protection services, in the form of life insurance, IULs, and then start an internal insurance team, which I already had started with the last company that I was with, where I held my mortgage license. However, I got cut off at the knees, because they got a little greedy. Oh, okay. What'd they do? Cut your comp or something? Not even that. They cut the leads off. So first they cut the leads off, and then wanted to go to a CPL model, which is cost per lead, way more than what made any business sense. And so that basically forced me to do what I wanted to do anyway, start partnering with different mortgage companies to get these leads, and then disperse them out to the team to sell. So I'll be able to do it internally and externally, and have multiple partnerships now. Okay. And through all that, how'd you land with us? Because you're doing mortgage. Sounds like, I mean, you're making some money, right, I'm assuming, doing these other businesses. But how did you end up, or how did we end up on your radar? That's a good question. When the rates went up in 2021 and into 2022 mostly, I saw, as it was happening, I was like, okay, income's going to drop, I'm never going to be able to hit my goals, I need to look for side hustle. Okay. You saw it coming. I saw it coming a few months before it did. Got it. Yep. And so I'm thinking to myself, because most of my business at that point was refi. Yeah. So I saw it coming, and so then my eyes opened up to, okay, I need to get a secondary source of income. So when I took this upon myself to try this out, right, it was just to get back to where I was. Okay. And then when I realized, hey, I'm more passionate about this, I'm helping more people, and there's good money in it, it became the true passion. Gotcha. Okay. Not what you expected, not why you got into it. No, that's not why I got into it, no. So you see this coming, you know, with the rates going where they are, it's going to cut into my income. Did you start looking for life insurance specifically? Did you start looking for a side hustle? How did you actually find insurance, FFL, what led you there? Yep. So there's a guy that I worked with in mortgages that came into my office and started working in my office. And then I left to go back to a bank that I was with before, and then he got into life insurance. Okay. Through us. Yes. Gotcha. Yes. So that's how I found out about it. However, based on the way that he had left the place that I was with at the time, I wasn't allowed to work through him in any sort of capacity or with him. So I basically, yeah, I basically found Matt and Julius through a mutual friend. Got it. So you couldn't work with him, what, some non-compete, non-type of thing or something? He just didn't do things right. And actually he- Oh, so you didn't want to? I mean, I wanted to learn, but he didn't do things right. And then, yeah, Sean actually had to let him go, which was- Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So anyways, you find Julius and how'd you know them? Just randomly found him online? Did you know him personally? No, actually through one of the guys that works with me now, who I've brought in as an LOA to help me on the loan side and on the life side, have him cross-selling. That's how I found out about Julius and Matt. Got it. Okay. And what'd you think initially? Did you have any previous knowledge on insurance at all, life insurance? What were your thoughts going into it? What were your expectations? I didn't have any. I just knew, hey, this is a good product that helps people and there's money in it. And if I can just make a little bit more as a side hustle, then it's worth my time. Gotcha. And it turned into something else. At the time, Mike, with mortgages and rates going up, right, here's the best way I'd like to explain it, is we were, when rates were at like two and a quarter to 2.75, people had equity after COVID, values went up, right? Rates also went up. We were taking people with 700 plus credit scores and our job was to get them into a full refi, knowing very well that that wasn't the best product for them. We should have been putting them in a home equity loan, a home equity line of credit. That way it didn't touch their low mortgage rate, they'd save more money, they'd consolidate that debt, all that good stuff, and then maybe combine it later, right? So I didn't feel like a good person doing my job, taking someone from a low rate, putting them in a higher one or doubling it, knowing there's a better product out there for them at the time. So with life insurance, when I had a customer call me crying, where I remember I did a VA rate reduction loan. This is one for a veteran where there's no appraisal, no verification of income. You just drop the rate and lower the payment, right? I saved them, I think it was like 150 bucks, right? And then I took that savings and I put them in a life plan because they didn't have it. And they were like, we don't know if we're super comfortable with this. I was like, guys, you don't have anything. This specifically is good for you, and I'll help you out in the future. They've been clients of mine for a while. A year later, she called me crying, letting me know that he passed away. Thank you so much. And that was moving for me. Yeah. That was really moving for me. Was that your first death claim? I think that was. Yeah. Talk about that because it's one thing, if I recruit you, Randall, and I tell you about a death claim I had and experiences, it's one thing to hear it, but to actually live it and experience it, I feel like it changes the whole dynamic in what we do. It changes your whole perspective. What type of impact did that have on you? It gave me chills. It's kind of still doing it. I've had over 50 of them because I do a high volume of clients. Right. I've got a high volume. But something like that was really, really moving for me. Yeah. Yep. I mean, you're dealing with people in a situation where if I don't refinance my mortgage, okay, maybe I don't save money, whatever, right? But if I don't have life insurance and I die, when I die, my family's screwed. Fair enough. Most cases, right? Yes. Especially our clients. Most of our clients are middle Americans. We're not chasing down the guy who owns seven homes and a yacht and has his own private plane and trying to sell him a final expense policy. These are clients that they don't, whatever it is, 10 grand, 20 grand, 100 grand, they don't have that. Their family is, unfortunately, screwed for generations. It's a big deal. It is. It's huge. It takes time to get things in order. Yeah. My team and myself, we cross sell that as payment protection. Okay. We used to call it equity protection, but then clients would get concerned about their equity. It's like, okay, this is payment protection. It'll cover your mortgage for X number of months or just life insurance, like, hey, 15K, 20K, whatever's needed and going over those options. You're selling predominantly final expense. Is that accurate? Yes. Final expense term. Go-to is always AmeriCo. Yeah. AmeriCo and then American Amicable, Mutual of Omaha sometimes a little bit. And then the Ethos TrueStage is actually pretty good. Yeah. AIG CoreBridge for guaranteed also is good. There's this new one, InstaBrain. I haven't used it yet, but I'm waiting on them to get a whole life final expense. Yeah. Gotcha. Was there a learning curve for you? Because I mean, selling life insurance. I know you're cross-selling, but selling life insurance versus mortgage, completely different animal, right? What was it? Was there a learning curve early on? Yeah, absolutely. What did you struggle with the most? That's a good question. I think what I struggled with most is kind of like, just like when I was learning about mortgage, I'm a go-getter. So I noticed with contracting people, they wanted to study and learn everything up front so they could go in with confidence. Yeah. I just learned it on the fly. I'm like, let me get someone on the phone. Let me review options. If I don't know the answer, I'm going to find out. I'll put them on hold. I'll call them back and I'm calling my uplines to get an answer. And so anyone that I've brought in, I'm like, Hey, they know how busy I am. Right. And I'm like, Hey, I'm always going to make time. If you need me, call me, text me, whatever. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. If I'm not available, you have these other resources that you can go to right away. We'll get your answer. So the hardest thing for me was just knowing the products, knowing which ones to sell, which carriers to use, and then how to filter based on like health conditions, knowing, Hey, this person has congestive heart failure. Maybe that's a trans America right away. Right. So, yeah, just basically guidelines. And that's, yeah, that's about it. Gotcha. So it means easier transition than most. Is that fair to say? I mean, a lot of people struggle for weeks, months, but you coming from a sales background, mortgages, and I guess more cross-selling, but you're not buying leads from any system. You're cross-selling your own clients. Yeah. But I am purchasing leads now from a title company and I'm partnering with different mortgage companies. So I've got one mortgage company right now. That's going to be sending leads to two of the guys that we put in that office. Okay. I've got another mortgage company that's meeting with the board and third week of January. So I'll have to have probably a meeting with that board to get leads there. So partnering with these different firms and then where I'm going to be selling mortgages, I'm going to be getting all those consumer direct leads and leads from the branch, growing a region within this mortgage company specific to just cross-selling life insurance to these recently funded clients. And that's where I found the most success. Yeah. That's where I found the most success. We have all the data too, which makes it a lot easier when you can call and you already have all the, all the customers. Right. Information needed to. Yeah. Which I think, you know, you can say that with any good lead, right? Like you think about whatever your client's doing. Like, you know, we have leads that are generated online, direct mail, but it's always a client giving you their information, asking you for something at the end of the day, lead based sale. Now yours a little different that you already have. They're not necessarily asking for life insurance, but how, so how do you approach that? Right. Cause I'm so used to all of our leads or someone that goes, Hey, I need help with life insurance. Yours are mortgage clients. They're not necessarily saying that, but I think it speaks to the fact that everybody needs life insurance, right? Does everybody need a mortgage? No. Cause if I don't own a house, we need a mortgage for it. Right. Does everybody need solar? No. Does everybody need a car? No. You probably have a car, but life insurance, in my opinion, is the only, especially from an insurance standpoint, like you own a car, right? Of course. You got car insurance. Yep. You have to have it. Are you guaranteed to use it? I mean, you have to, no, not, not if you don't get in a crash. Exactly. Right. Yep. You have homeowner's insurance. Of course. Are you guaranteed to use it? No. You probably have insurance on your cell phone. Maybe I don't. Cause I think it's a scam. I just buy a new one. But are you guaranteed? No. Unless you smash your phone, you're probably paying on this ship for three years. I talked to clients about this all the time. I'm like, okay, this is the only product, like a whole life policy and IUL. This is the only product that offers a guaranteed payout. There's no expiration date. Right. Term has an expiration date. Sure. Well, life doesn't. Right. So you can live till 189 can be gone tomorrow. No matter what. It's the only product and program that offers a guaranteed payout to your family with auto insurance, with homeowner's insurance. If something doesn't happen, then you paid into it. You get nothing back. Right. This there's, I always say there's Benjamin Franklin said, there's two things in life, taxes and death. Correct. Right. So boom, this is a guaranteed payout. Yep. And there's no taxes on it. So it's even better, you know? But yeah, it's, it's the only one you're a hundred percent guaranteed to use. And I'm not saying, you know, you shouldn't sell these other products, but this is one that has that guarantee, which, you know, it, for me, it's always why I felt really good about doing it as I knew that, you know, if I'm meeting with you, your family, I'm going to leave you in a better position than you were in before I got there. And that's always been the goal here, whether you're, you know, your own leads, our leads, whatever, at the end of the day, you, it's the value of the product. I also think Randall, you have to actually care about people. A hundred percent. That's a huge part, right? Like, I mean, you even said earlier, like you saw the value in this and how that made you feel like talking a little bit more about that, getting into this, you got into this for the money. Everybody does. Everyone takes a side hustle for the money. Sure. Then when you realize like, okay, this aligns with my values. Like I'm helping people. This is, this is great. Right. It's changing lives. It's actually helping families is changing lives. It's providing security. It's a, it's a good feeling. That's how you know, you're on the right path. Right now, financially, you saw this, you know, interest rate change. You knew you were going to take a dip in income. How much did you take a dip? What percentage wise, or how much do you think you lost because of that? 25%. Okay. How long did it take you to make that up here? Uh, two months. Seriously. Two months. And I'm assuming you're way above that now. Uh, yeah, for sure. Um, financially has this, this past year, like you did 1.2 and 24 personally. So like 600 K this last year, are these your most successful years financially? Is that safe? Did you do more before? Like, how does this rank? 2024 was definitely my best year. Yeah. Uh, 2025 was a down year, but I was going through a lot of changes. I started in an AI agency. Okay. Um, I have a healthcare agency. Uh, what else? I started building a team and so, you know, I've spent time developing the team and then also, uh, just, uh, less leads than I was getting before. Okay. Um, but that's all going to change this year. Yeah. By Q2 this year, we should have a really good flow. Everyone that's with me and, and as a part of the team. Got it. And you're recruiting, um, just for the life insurance agency for all the above, like what's that look like? Just for the life insurance agency where I provide leads. Um, yeah. So that's, but I'm, I'm being very selective. I'm not trying to build a huge team. I also, I'm only going to have a select number of leads that are going to be able to get. You know, the, these specific leads and then the place that I'm, I'm, I'm working with now, then I'm now moving my, uh, my mortgage license with, I can only grow a team internally. Okay. So you have to be an employee of this, of this company to be able to get these specific leads. Um, and those needs can't be shared. Gotcha. Uh, how are you finding the agents for your team? And I love that you, you say you're being selective because we went through this wave about a year or two before you started with us, where everybody was recruiting everybody, like just throw a bunch of ---- against the wall, see what sticks. And then what happens there is you recruit a lot of bad agents. They accumulate that, believe it or not, Randall, they don't pay their debt. They run and then you're stuck with it. But I go part of that's your fault. Do you recruited this guy? You knew he wasn't a good guy and you kept them here because you saw dollar bills and we've moved so far away from that. Um, so I love that you're being selective. How are you being selective where you find these guys? Personal network, really? And people that know me just know, Hey, I've always been a killer. Like, you know, I do really well. I'm helping a lot of families. Um, it's what, it's what I'm passionate about. And all they have to do is talk to one other person that works with me and they're like, Hey, this is great. We're provided leads. We have the training. They've got one thing to focus on and that's just getting a customer on the phone, making a friend and helping them out. And what I've, uh, what we're also training to is verifying policies because I can't tell you Mike, how many times a client's like, I've got life insurance. Okay, great. We're a staple in the industry, right? Let's go ahead and verify what you have because a lot of clients think they have something they don't. Number of times, right? A client will tell me I'm paying $36. I have 250,000, 200, 400,000 life, right? I'm like, you have an accidental only policy. Let's go ahead and call and verify. And then we'll see if there's anything else that you have and then we'll take care of you. Yeah. Um, that's huge. So I've, I never sold over the phone. I was always in home years ago. Right. And that was one of the, um, I guess biggest hurdles in the beginning. I was in my early twenties. I would meet with a client in my first week out, Randall, I'd meet with a client. They would tell me I got, you know, 200 K whole life. I pay 50 bucks a month. I pack my ---- up and leave. Now I was recruited by Sean directly. So you can imagine how that phone call went. And I called him once and he's like, did you see the policy? I'm like, no. Okay. If you don't see the policy, they don't have the policy. Go back to the house and tell them to show you the policy. But I left already go back to. So I learned never to do that again. But to your point, I can probably count on when I sold for a handful of years, I can count on one hand, the amount of times the client had something close to what they thought they had. Yeah. Literally probably three or four times tops right now over the phone, a little different. Cause if I'm sitting there, I can just go go find your policy. Well, I don't know where it's at, but I got time. I got to look up some stuff for your application. Anyways, I'll wait. And you know what happens? They get up and go, and I've never done it over the phone. So you're only over the phone. Correct. How are you verifying this? Because I always, you know, me being in your house, it takes a lot for you to go, Hey, I'm done. Can you leave my house? Yep. You got me on the phone. There's a big red button you can press and it's over. Right. How do you make sure to get that? Like, how do you navigate that? Doesn't work every time, but it's like this. Most people don't have their policy or it's locked in a safe or I get that all the time. I would say more, more people than not, they don't know where their policy is. Right. So I'm like, okay, go ahead and pull up your bank account. Right. So wherever they bank at, take a look at the day that it's coming out. If they at least know the name of the company or the carrier it's coming out, I'll say, okay, take, take a look. How much is coming out? What's the date? What's the name of the carrier? Right. I'll Google it. I'll call the carrier, get them on the phone. They'll verify them themselves. Right. I'll get the policy number. And then you ask all the right questions. What's the face value? Is this a term? Is this a whole life? Is this a index universal? What kind of plan is this? What's the expiration dates? You know, just basic stuff like that. Got it. And they're usually pretty, I guess that they go along with you ever get any pushback? Like, how do you, is it just, Hey, go call them right now. How do you work through that? Cause obviously you don't want to lose it. Right. You want to keep them on the phone and because, you know, 99% chance. It's not what they say it is. It goes back to like, I wasn't trying to get your policy because I wanted your information. I'm trying to help you because odds are you got an accidental death policy. And when you die, your family ain't getting no money. It happens. So more times than not, clients don't know what they have, but the way that I do it, and it doesn't always work. Right. Cause people get impatient. Sure. I call with them. I'm not just saying, Hey, here's the information. Go verify and get back to me. Let's call together. When do you have time? A lot of people won't have the time to do it then. So like, okay, let's schedule a time to do this because a lot of people don't realize. What they have, or they think they may have something that they don't. So let's just verify it. I want to make sure you and your family are in the best possible position. Really good at what I do, but let's just verify this first. It only takes a few minutes. If you don't have time now, when is the best time that I can reach you? I'm free on this day or, you know, just, yeah, that's, that's how I do it. I set up the appointment schedule it. As soon as that appointment scheduled, they're getting a text message and another text message 10 minutes before, uh, I call them. Got it. And is that you sending that personally? You got automation set up? Like what? Joe built all my own trips, all my own automations myself. Yes. Got it. Yep. I have AI too, so that helps. Yeah. I mean, dude, if you're not using AI in your business right now, you're going to get left behind. Yeah. And a lot of people are for AI is replacing jobs. No, you, you still need someone to prompt the AI, by the way, it's not someone with knowledge on how to use AI may replace your job. Right. You know, it's like, Hey, I used to be a writer and then they created the typewriter. Okay. You learn how to use a typewriter. Are you going to be out of business? Right. And, and, you know, so on, but AI, it, it allows you to do so much more in the same amount of time if you use it to your advantage. So how are you using AI in your business? Great question. I created an AI up on dialing agent. Okay. So what I'll do is the leads that I've dialed and then the leads that I put on a drip and then a second trip, if they didn't respond to that, I'll load it into AI. Okay. AI will run through this. It'll dial. I think it's like 27 different times at different times throughout the day when it thinks the customer will answer. Yeah. And then the agent that I created will do a, it'll set an appointment based on my calendar. Then I'll call the client or my agent will call the client and sell, sell the deal. Okay. I also created a secondary agent to do a warm transfer. So if someone's available, it can do a warm transfer to that agent. Um, so I'm using it mostly right now on dated leads. Yeah. Um, that just leads, you've probably called already. Didn't work out. Couldn't get ahold of that type of stuff. Yeah. Just for leads that I could not get ahold of. This is mostly what I've been using it for. Got it. So like I'll pick up one to three policies a month just by using the AI dialer. Yeah. And how long did that take you to set up and how much did it cost you to set it up? Oh, that is, that's a loaded question. Um, it took a while, it took a while to set up, but there's prompts that you can give it and you're always editing it. Then I did a similar thing for mortgage to, to create appointments for me on the mortgage side. Yeah. Um, cost wise, I paid annually upfront for a couple of different services and you know, there's a couple hundred bucks a year or something. A lot more than that. Okay. Yeah. What, what AI platforms are you, I'm assuming this is not chat GPT. No. Chat GPT can be used to refine scripts and grade calls. Um, I was using gamma for PowerPoint presentations, business to business, where I'd, I'd put in a, I'd put in a podcast or, you know, I, I would do a podcast. I would take that. I'd put it into, I'd take the transcript. I'd put it into AI and it would give me a PowerPoint presentation. So, uh, but I partnered with, uh, I partnered with another firm on that so that I could basically pull out of being so much front end on that and being focused more on income producing stuff. Roughly. I know you paid annually. I'm trying to paint the picture for people that, you know, look, Hey, maybe it's not worth it. You're picking up two or three extra deals a month, right? What do you think monthly these AI services cost you? I mean, probably about with everything I'm using probably about 1500 a month. 1500 a month. Yep. So your three policies pays for that. And then some one policy would pay for that. So definitely worth it. Take some time to put it together, but once you have it, you have it, then you can tweak the prompts, do whatever. But, and there, and these are just a few tools. There's so many other tools out there. It's there. There's really, I say this a lot in 2026, there's no excuse to be broke because there's so much out there. I mean, you could, you do this from home or from an office, but we were driving three, four hours to a house to get no show to drive to this one, to get a one leg. And like, Oh, my last appointment is at 10. I hope they're there. You know, now you're like this. Yes. Back to back. So talk to me about your schedule, because even though you're doing mortgages and all this other stuff, you still, I mean, last year you said it was a down year, but you still sold 600 grand. It's a lot of life insurance. What's your schedule like for life insurance clients? What's that look like? So I adjust my schedule by the week and 30 minute blocks. Right. So I wake up between six 30 to seven 30. Generally. Yeah. I got to go let my dog out. Yeah. He's the old Doberman, right? Yeah. Big Doberman. Gentle giant. Okay. So I let him out, hit the gym, come back, shower. And I'm on by 9 a.m. Eastern. Okay. 10 a.m. Eastern preset appointments. You're doing one call close. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'll one call close everything I can. Right. If it's possible, but a lot of it is follow up. Right. Yeah. But basically, yeah, I set blocks. So let's say nine to 10 30 and then maybe 30 minutes admin and then 11 to 12 30 minute break work on something else. An hour email blast back to the front end. And then usually I'm going to like eight. And then after that is admin again until whenever I'm done. 10 11. Yeah. And that's what? Five days a week. Seven days a week. Depends. You know, 2025 during the summer, I was doing seven days a week for a month. Yeah. 2024 was mostly six days a week, but 2024 was mostly all grind. Yeah. I didn't have a huge team, just a couple of people. I didn't have anyone working specialty leads like this. So yeah, I mean, it differs by the week. Gotcha. Now, when you started looking into life insurance, did you look at other IMOs, other companies? Did you just settle on the first one you found? How much research did you do before you got started with us? Yep. I knew of other IMOs out there, but there were so many people already working with family first. Yeah. And there were so many people that it was all over social media. Like it blew up. And then in person, everyone in the mortgage industry started to get into it, whether they left mortgage or they started it as a side hustle, but no one was resilient. Yeah. So I figured out a way to make it work. And like I said, Mike, I started with just cross-selling my own funded clients. Right. Just with that. I didn't pay for leads. Yeah. I tried everything out as far as leads go. So I even did a lock-in where for three days, I drove into the office, which I'm a huge, huge fan of working from home. Okay. Is that where you work predominantly? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Whole office set up. So that was new for you. Go out in the office for at least here. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. So what was that like? I mean, going in the office, whether it's a mortgage office or an insurance office, it's like I get less work done because first of all, there's a drive time commute. Right. I cut that out working from home. It goes into work. Right. But mostly it's saying hi to a bunch of people, right, that you may not see as often. So it's more of a social thing. I couldn't get as much work done unless I'm coming in for like a week. So, but it's good. It's good. Yeah. It's good. Gotcha. What is your goal for this year, personal and then agency wise? Do you have production numbers, income? What are you focused on? I'm focused on getting back to where I was in 2024 and building. Okay. I want to make sure my team is taken care of, that we have enough leads coming in where we can supplement the leads that we're getting now. We can supplement with what I like to call Glen Gary leads. Yeah. The leads that come in with the social, the monthly payment, all the information, like the, the primo leads. Right. And then also for whatever mortgage company that I'm working with, for those loan officers to have a conversation with the customer that we're going to be reaching out post funding. Right. And yeah, so that's basically my goal. Slowly grow a team. Yeah. Do it steady so that my people are taken care of. And then just, just build from there. Gotcha. Um, what was the thing that surprised you the most about this business, this industry? You got to come back to that one. Um, let's, uh, we got an agent of the week, Randall. So I got a video here. You know, you talk about big production numbers and, um, this individual Wesley ransom hit hall of fame for the first time this year, 568,000 personal. Um, and you know, we've, we started this company about 12 years ago now, you know, how many hall of fame agents we had the first year? Take a guess. How many employees the first year? Probably, well, agents, non-employees contract probably, uh, probably a couple of thousand, maybe a thousand. I'd say, I'd say five. Zero. We had none. We didn't even have the hall of fame for the first couple of years. It's kind of a trick question. Cause it was all, it was all in person, right? It was in person, but we didn't hall of fame in person. It was the reason is more, you've heard the, you know, the whole four minute mile story, right? Where no one ran a four minute mile. Everyone thought it was impossible. And I'm paraphrasing. I'm probably screwing it up. I'm sorry. Somebody did. And all of a sudden everybody is a matter of fact, there's a kid at my daughter's middle school who has the state record for like four minutes and 20 seconds or something. But you had to believe it could happen first. Right? So prior to that, the top agent did maybe 250, 300 K, which now you ain't even on a lean. No one's even talking to you like 300 K get out of here, but it's still an amazing accomplishment. It's still a lot of life insurance, but it took a handful of guys to look at. They literally just kind of applied math to it. All right. We have this many hours in a day. If I meet with this many clients, I'm going to close this percentage, right? If I want to have a higher production amount, I just need to meet with more clients, right? In order to do that, I need more leads in order to need more leads, need to spend more money, generate more leads, whatever the case may be. So we had a handful of guys, John Wetmore, and they just looked at it from like a mathematic standpoint. It's a numbers game. I was filled in their schedule. John will tell you. He asked John Wetmore this to this day. He's like, I did what I didn't account for. He did the math on how to get the 400 because what I didn't account for was the momentum though. Yes, because the end he did, they ended up doing like five and change because of just the momentum of adding this to your schedule, you know, working, even though you're only working, whatever, maybe 10 hours more a week or whatever the number was, but he didn't account for how much more, um, you know, momentum he'd have just by increasing his workflow leads. Cause now, like you talked about these age leads that nobody answered. You put them in the dialers. I mean, we didn't have AI back then, but they're putting into drip and they're calling them again. So now you have this massive nest of, of leads to where you thought you were going to hit four and now you're hitting five, 600 K and now we have, I mean, you did 1.2 your first year. We had, I think 10 or 15, maybe it was 10 people on stage last year, over a million in production. It's like our first year, our top guy did three, but it's this it's, it's, you know, believing it's the confidence. And I guess before we get into this video, I mean, hearing your story and all the things you've done, you seem to be, you seem to have a lot of confidence. Is that fair? Sure. How, where, where does that come from? How do you manage that? Cause I don't think I, I, this is most, one of the most important things about this business attitude activity solves everything here, right? You got to work your ass off number one, but if this isn't right, you're not going to have success. So have you always been that way? How do you maintain that day to day? Cause not every day is a great day, right? You may get on the phone. You may have a, you know, you may, you may have an offer. You go for 10, one day, maybe somebody's mortgage. Like not every day is perfect, but how do you manage this? Consistency, right? So having sticking to a schedule definitely helps. Yeah. Right. Minimizing distractions is huge. Having, uh, having set blocks of time will help any agents. Yeah. Um, and then momentum, like you mentioned, momentum is huge because when I get momentum and you, I pick up that steam, I'm not letting off until there's something in my schedule that I'm just not, I'm not letting off because as soon as you let off the gas, that's, that's when it dies like that. Cause it's hard to get it. And when you get it, it's invigorating and you just want to keep, you want to keep pushing. So like, I always suggest like, you know, as a, as an agent or a new agent, push it to your limit and give it everything you got. Yeah. Cause you can do a lot more than you think you can. Definitely. But it is up here. If you start getting the negative talk in your head, so like some of my agents, they'll have a bad day, a bad two days. Right. And it's like, okay, you're, you're doing really well. Look at where you were at back at this point in time. Right. This happens to everybody. It happens to me. Right. But as soon as you get that momentum back, push, like, right. Like keep going, keep going. Absolutely. And just, you know, you want to avoid as much negative talk as possible. Cause when that happens, when the mentality changes, that's, that's when you can either come off as maybe needy to the client or too pushy, or, you know, when you make a friend, you sit back, you know, you're like, I got this, you tell yourself a lot of agents need to do that for themselves. Um, for me, I'm just like, okay, that's one person. Let me just pick up the phone and call another. Yeah. Sometimes you almost got to step back and look at where you are. Now, if you're brand new, maybe it's hard, but you've had success here. You know what you're doing. We all go through those moments of, you know, you have a bad day. You start second guessing yourself, but you almost need to remind, like I sold whatever it was last year, last month, last week. I know what, this is just, Hey, it's just a bad moment. I probably screwed something up. Let me move past it. And to your point, if you got enough leads, if you got a good lead flow, if you're working, it's easier to move past that. If you have nothing on your schedule and you go for four and you don't pick up the phone and keep dialing, it's easy to sabotage your success too. Absolutely. Uh, take a look at what, uh, Wesley has to say here, 500 plus this past year. So congratulations on hitting hall of fame. Hey, my name is Wesley ransom. Uh, my one piece of advice for new agents would realistically just be treating the opportunity, like the opportunity that it is. A lot of people come into this with expectations that it's going to be like a W2 job, you know, work part time hours, maybe even just full time hours, but anybody in the industry knows that you get out what you put in. So if you're expecting to work, like it's a job, you're going to get paid like it's a job. But if you treat it like a business and you treat the business with the intent, the intentionality that it's going to be a business, you're going to get paid a lot more and you're going to get treated a lot better from that business. Additionally, a lot of people come into this with a really big ego. They're trying to reinvent the wheel. They try and do it their way, my way or the highway, whatever it might be. But the reality is, you know, your upline or whoever brought you into the business likely knows a lot more and is more than willing to help you get started and up and running so that you don't have to make the same mistakes that they did. So the reality is all you got to do is ask for assistance when you need it and there's no reason why you should fail. But it's a really big misconception that a lot of people have. There's a lot in that. First, treating it like a business, you know, it's not a job. You go to a job, they tell you what time to get there, when you can have lunch, what time you have to leave, almost what you have to do for the day, right here. If you don't work, no one's going to call you. Is Sean going to call you and go, Randall, you didn't sell any policies today? No, that's on you, right? And to Wesley's point, you get what you, you know, whatever you put in, you'll get out. People treat this sometimes like it's a part-time job. I'll be the first that you cannot do this part-time. Part-time is you have one full-time job and then you treat this like a second full-time job. If you're putting in part-time hours, if you're putting in hobby hours, you got any hobbies, Randall? I DJ. You DJ. You make any money DJing? Nope. No, that's not why you got into it, right? You like to DJ. Love it. If you put in, how many hours a week do you put into DJing? Not much anymore. Okay. A couple out here and there. If you did that here, what would your bank account look like? Yeah, not the same. Not the same. And people do that though. They come in here part-time and like, you know, I'm just going to do, I'll dial a couple hours today, dude. It ends up being one hour because by the time you get to the office and then you get your lunch and then you get your lead set up and then you dial 10 people, they don't answer. You go, I put it in for today. I'll start again tomorrow. Then weeks go by and then they go, I didn't make any money there. FFL sucks. Think, no, your effort sucks. Because it is, this is an opportunity. It's not a guarantee. It's an opportunity. Whatever you do with it is on you. And it does take massive, like it's simple though. I would say it's not rocket science. I mean, you, you came from mortgages, right? Life insurance. Once you learn the products, pretty simple, right? It is. Yeah. You got certain products for certain health conditions. This one takes that. This one doesn't take that. What's the client looking for? Is it whole life? Is it termed? Do they want an IUL? I mean, yes, we sell some annuities, but that's pretty much our bread and butter. Those three products. Very simple, right? Our whole life never goes up. Doesn't end early. All that good stuff. The term ends when the term says there's cashback option and the IUL is a different animal. You got some, you know, cost of insurance. You're going to earn some interest. Can't lose a dollar. Pretty much all of our products in a nutshell. All simplified issue. I'm not sticking a needle in you. Point, you know, having you pee in a cup, none of that. You're asking health questions. We're doing a script check. We're saying yes, no. And if it's no, we move you to another product. Unless you're on oxygen in a nursing home or you're, you know, 92 years old. We pretty much have a policy for everyone. Correct. I mean, everyone gets approved with guaranteed options. So there you go. You know. So simple, but it is hard work. Yeah. What? West, right? West, yep. Yeah. I mean, that was a really, that was a really good, you know, little snippet there. Yeah. That he made the whole thing. Um, I would add just, you know, do right by the customer. Do things right. Because there are, there's a form of ethics here where, you know, you can do things that are not right. And then it's going to come back and bite you. It will always, always, it may not bite you immediately. You may think you're free and clear, but eventually it will catch up to you. I've seen it, you know, I've been in this business 10, 12 years now. I've never seen anyone get away from it. I've seen people last a little bit longer, but it always comes back to bite him in the ass. Right. And then the last thing you talked about was if you don't know something, I'm paraphrasing, but there's somebody here that knows it. Yep. Just like I said, when I first started in the life insurance side, if I didn't, I didn't need all the answers first. If I didn't know I was hitting up my upline, heading up my uplines upline, trying to get in touch with someone to get my, my, my question answered, which is why I tell my team when they start, Hey, if you need something, put the client on hold and keep calling me or texting me. If I'm on the line, I'll text you back and say, Hey, I'm not available. Go to this person. And they have the list of who to go to. Right. So they're going to get their questions answered. Yeah. So I a hundred percent agree with that. It's simple. I mean, why, why would you not do that? Like if you call whoever, I mean, we had a big Verizon outage recently. If you call the company and they don't have the answer for you, what are they going to put you on hold? Right. How many times you've been on the line with some customer service and they go, you mind if I put you on a brief hold? The brief holds like four minutes. Then they come back with the answer. They transfer you to someone else. Why is it any different here? But I'm on the phone with you. You're asking me questions about your policy. They have no idea. I go, Hey, Randall, do you mind if I put you on a brief hold? Let me call my manager and get you the answer for that. Cause I don't want to tell you something that's not true. Yep. And what is he going to do? We get all upset. A hundred percent. And usually that's a customer that's interested because they're going to hold. Correct. Or you've already gone over the options, right? And they're interested. They just have a clarifying question or a qualifying question that you don't know the answer to. So find out for them, try not to even call them back. I'd put them on hold and get that answer. Exactly. I mean, it's because what we do is so simple. If you've ran, I don't know, a hundred appointments, you'll probably ran into every situation. Someone's going to run into, right? I mean, you've been doing this two years now. Is there, if you recruit me brand new, I never sold anything. What are the odds that I'm going to run into a situation that you can't help me with? A hundred percent. Or I'm sorry. No, slim to none. That I haven't. Yeah. That you can't help me with. I mean, at some point in sales, no matter what industry you're in, you'll hear everything. Yeah. So probably zero to 1% chance. Correct. After about a year. I mean, you don't need to do it 10 years to be in it. You sell insurance with us for about a year. You're going to run into just about every scenario. The clients are the clients, right? There's older clients, there's younger, there's health issues. There's different mortgage amounts. They're a homeowner, they're not. But at the end of the day, it's because of who our clients are, whether you're getting them off of your own leads, our leads, there's somebody that's interested. And we deal with predominantly middle American families. It's not a one size fits all, but it's, you do this enough. You're going to know what to do. And to Wesley's point, if you're brand new, you don't need to know what to do. Because there's plenty of people around you that already do. Absolutely. And nowadays with the, you know, we used to call from the house, which I'll be in the home. Hey, let me call my manager. I'd call Sean right up on the spot. Hey, client has this like day one. He didn't, Sean didn't give me underwriting guides and train me on the products. He said, here's the product. We was long before America. We had, you know, Fidelity, we had Mutual of Omaha. Go in the house with these, lead with this. Look at the health questions. Cause they'll tell you, the app will also tell you, right? If the health questions, if they say yes to these health questions, certain products, you're uneligible, especially final expense. Say yes to these, move to this box. Say yes to these. You're not eligible. Pretty simple. And if I was ever unsure, I just go, Hey, so I'm sitting with Randall here. Randall takes this mad, this blah, blah, blah. What product should I show him? Hey, show him this. He'll get approved because this carrier takes that. Okay, cool. My client's not going, Oh, you don't know what you're doing. They're just sitting there going, Oh, so that one's going to work for me. Yeah. Let's make an application. See if you get approved. For sure. A hundred percent. I mean, you can talk yourself into or out of just about anything, right? And the beauty about what we do is if you're not having success, it's on you. And if you are, it's also on you. We have a great opportunity, Randall, but nothing's guaranteed. You had to put the work in for sure. Right. We provide the opportunity, you know, people, Oh, thank you. So all we did was build the company. You guys came and then ran with it. So it's, it's twofold, but you got to put the work in. But in the same sense, if you don't have the success, don't blame me, Sean, the company that's on you. A hundred percent. That's a hundred percent on you. If you don't have a success, either you don't have the effort. You're not putting the lead spend in. Right. You got to bet on yourself. You got to invest in yourself. Um, it's either effort or, I mean, generally that's what it comes down to or consistency. Like all these things that make people successful are the same things that, that, that agents are not doing. If they're not getting the results that, that, that they want to see. Correct. And you know, you're, you're going through this now and recruiting, and this business is not for everyone. That's the other, it's okay. If someone comes in and it's not for them, get rid of them. Fam, it sounds kind of messed, but get rid of them quick. Because if it's not a good fit, they want you when you see these red flags and recruiting and you ignore them, you're going to cause bigger issues down the road. It's okay to go, you know what, dude, it's probably not for you. I've got a small team of killers and I'm okay with that. I'm not trying to build the largest team. Right. I'm just trying to get the right people in place. Make sure my people are taken care of. They have the right training and they can hit their goals and help families. Ultimately. Yeah. If I'm just focused on my individual production. Yeah. I'm going to have more. I'm going to have more individual results, but building a team and, and, and having a small team of killers, ultimately we're going to help more people. We're going to help more families. That's what it's about. Absolutely. Twofold. You're helping families by, you know, selling more life insurance, but you're also helping those families of the agents that you're recruiting. Cause like you said, no one comes to us, you know, wealthy. They come to us usually in a position where they're either trying to make some additional money or they're hurting. I mean, economy is what it is. It's, it's not easy out there for everyone. And I just, you know, it's a great opportunity, but that's the key. It's an opportunity, whatever you do with it. So, well, and you've been kicking ass the last couple of years, Randall. So congrats on the success two-time hall of famers, 600 K this year. And I, you know, I can't wait to see what you do next or this year. Now we're in 26 with your team. And, you know, at the end of the day, the numbers, the money, everything's great. But what that number signifies that, you know, we did about between life and annuities around 850 million in 2025. But how many families is that that are now protected? Their money's protected. If it's an annuity, final expense, mortgage, whatever IULs, they're now in a better place than they were before because some agent called them up, spent a half hour, 40 minutes with them and helped them out. That's what's awesome about what we do. The money's a by-product. Yeah. You know, well, Randall, thank you. I appreciate you coming up guys. Thanks for watching. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and you know where to find us every week, right here on True Talk. We will see you next week.