Transcription
You know, I've never told anyone this before, but two years ago, I almost quit. So, towards the end of 2023, um I had just come back from a trip to Mexico. And uh when I came back, I came back to like four major chargebacks, which when you sell like 10 policies a month, which is probably what I was doing back then, uh four felt like a lot. And I also came back to four of my agents quitting on me within the same week. And again, that might not seem like a lot, but uh I think I only had like eight people working with me at that time. So that was half of my agency. And to make matters worse, they didn't just quit. One of my top producers at that time, when she quit, gave me a phone call and said basically said, "Hey, you suck as a leader." And um I just I just I need someone who can lead me better. And you know, she was probably right, by the way.
So all of this just happening at once, it you know, it really got to me. I called up my mentor and I said, "Hey man, I I don't know how long how much longer I can do this. It just it feels like every time that I take a step forward, I I end up taking two steps backward and I just feel like I'm getting nowhere. Like I'm on a hamster wheel and just nothing's happening." Uh, and I was ready to quit. I I I really was. But I didn't. And funny enough, that was back in October or November maybe even of 2023. January of 2024 is when I made my first $16,000 month. Literally like two to three months later, everything just completely turned around. And it's real crazy to think and I think it was uh just March of 2024, just a few months after that when I jumped on the Life Insurance Academy podcast and just by then I mean everything was booming. You know, I was on a six-figure trajectory, which I did end up making well over six figures. Um I had my first producer who was also making over six figures and then we had a bunch of other people that were winning as well. And it's just so crazy to think that had I quit just two to three months prior to that, I would have never seen it. Not only would I never have seen it, but I never would have learned the lessons that I learned about tracking your numbers, about accountability, about, you know, the law of large numbers. I never would have learned any of that had I quit 2 months prior.
However, with that said, I have quit before and um it was one of the best things that I ever did. So, in this video, what I want to talk about is my framework framework Jeez. My framework for quitting, for knowing when to quit and when to stick. Because here's the thing, this business is hard. It's one of the hardest things that you'll probably ever do. It's probably one of the hardest things you've ever done. But the truth is, anything worth doing is going to be hard. It's going to be difficult. It's going to be challenging. It's important to know when something is worth sticking in order to see things through, in order to get the result that we're looking for, and when things are just a dead end and not really worth pursuing. I think that's one of the biggest challenges of an entrepreneur. So, I'm going to share with you today what I've kind of found to be effective for me at least.
So, this is a real statistic by the way. 92% of agents who come into this industry selling life insurance end up quitting, failing out their very first year. They don't even make it 12 months. And that number only gets higher from year 2 to year 3 to year four and so on. So, when it's all said and done, probably only about 1% of people ever really end up making it in this industry. I truly believe it doesn't have to be that way. I think the reason it's that way is for two main reasons. One is there is a lot of misleading and deceptiveness or deception uh that happens in this industry which which I'm you know sucks to say. So we'll get into that a little bit. But two, it's also on the agents themselves, right? It's people that think this is going to be easier than they that they demand more out of life than they're willing to give. And so they end up quitting before they can really see anything happen. And here's the thing, like I said in the beginning of this video, I've wanted to quit before. Here's the other thing. It's more than just that one time. I'm gonna be completely honest, man. I think about quitting every year. Every year, I run into some other [ __ ] I run into into my next big challenge, my next dragon that I have to slay to hit the next level. And every time I do, like I'd be lying if I said it didn't come to mind. Matter of fact, I had another one of those moments like a few weeks ago. And I kind of touched on that in my last video. But the thing that keeps me going is well now especially is I've made it through one dip. Well, probably more than one now. But the biggest dip that I've ever overcome was crossing over from six to 16 grand a month or let's just say crossing over six figures. That's been the hardest one so far. So, the fact that I've been able to overcome that once and I've seen what happens when you stick things out, right? When you when you stick it out through those um challenging times, I now have I'm going to say proof and I have this conviction in me or I guess I should just say I have something to remind me that hey look the last time you stuck out a dip, it worked out. Let's do it again. But see, when you're a brand new agent and you suck and you don't know how to talk to people and you don't know how to read a script, right? Like like when you when you just suck at this stuff, you don't have that evidence. You don't have that experience yet. You don't have that to rely on.
So, I'm going to share with you a framework that I heard from Alex Hermosi once in in a video that completely changed my life. And I think about this like almost every day. Uh, and I share this with my agents when they first come on. And that framework is the five stages of entrepreneurship. So, these are the five stages that every single person with no exception, every single person goes through when starting a new venture. Okay. So, these are the five stages.
So the first stage is called uninformed optimism. So this is when you start something new and you're the most excited but the least informed, right? So this is when people sign up for the gym membership, right? This is when people uh first, you know, get their when they get their first contract with the life insurance carrier or maybe even when someone has their first baby or, you know, finds out they're pregnant. Who knows, right? This framework, by the way, applies to anything in life that's worth doing. Just anything great, anything spectacular. So in this first stage, we're excited. We're ignorant. We don't know what the hell we're talking about, but we're excited to try something new. And by the way, we're also getting a lot of positive feedback externally, right? So, let's say someone wants to become a doctor and they first sign up or they first make it into premed. Everybody's congratulating them, right? They're high-fiving. Oh my gosh. You know, the mom's going, "Oh, you're going to make us so proud. My son or my daughter's going to be a doctor." And so, you're getting all this positive feedback. Everything feels amazing.
And then you get hit with stage two, which stage two is called informed pessimism. This is when reality just sets in. It's when you start to realize there's a lot more moving pieces than you had expected, right? A lot more obstacles, a lot more challenges. You know, using that premed example, this is when that premed student now learns that they have to take this [ __ ] natural chemistry class or something like that. Um, I hear that's the one that a lot of people hate. Or biochemistry. I don't whatever. I'm not a [ __ ] doctor. I don't care. This is when the agent learns about chargebacks. This is when they learn that they have to or you know, let's say they're doing final expense. This is when they learned that they have to generate leads in some way and in most cases buy leads, so invest financially into them. Or an agent who's in a more like relationship marketing model. This is when they learn uh that they're going to get rejected by all their friends and family, for example, right? And this is when they learn that uh you know, they're going to have to send out hundreds of messages a day. Things are starting to suck. You're starting to see what it really takes to get to where you want to go. So, it just stops being as fun. However, most people don't really quit at this point, but this is when that doubt starts to get planted in a lot of agents heads.
And then that dip progresses to the valley of despair. So, the valley of despair, this is where it all happens. This is the test. This is the part that matters that makes the difference between a multi-million dollar agency and a no million agency. It's when we're doing everything that we're supposed to be doing, but it's just not working. It's just not clicking. Like something's just not happening. It's where we start to feel overwhelmed. We start to feel like maybe we made a mistake, like this is all a scam, right? Like this is all [ __ ] And we start wondering if, you know, may maybe this is even for me. I mean, what the hell? I never wanted to sell life insurance. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be a this. I wanted to be a that. This is when all those thoughts start to really creep in. And this is where most people quit. However, here's the most confusing part about this phase of entrepreneurship, about this phase of people's lives, is a lot of people quit in disguise. What I mean by that is they don't just say, "Hey, I'm this isn't for me. I quit." They go, "Hey, you know what? Maybe this one isn't for me, but I have a buddy who's he said he's making a lot of money doing crypto. Maybe I should try that. Oh, I know this guy on Instagram who's like trading stocks and he seems to be making pretty good money. Maybe I should go do that. Oh, I heard fitness coaching is in. Maybe I should do that." So, a lot of people don't admit that they're quitting, but it's what they're doing. So, then what they do is they quit this opportunity, move over to the next opportunity that they see, and then what happens is they repeat that cycle all over again.
Now, here's the thing. I think in some cases that's fine. I mean, not that my opinion on this matters. I mean, you do whatever the you want. Sometimes quitting isn't failure. I think the only time that quitting is actually failure is when you just stop. And I kind of want to get into that a little bit later. But here's the problem is a lot of people just get into panic mode when they hit this dip, right? When they're in the valley of despair and then they quit and they start something new and the problem occurs when they repeat that process or when they go through that same dip. They hit the valley despair on the next thing and then they just repeat the process and they jump to the next opportunity. So from what I've seen a lot of people do seems like a lot of people just relive those three phases again and again and again and they never actually end up accomplishing anything significant, right? They just do the same over and over again. Phase one, phase two, phase three, repeat. Phase one, phase two, phase three, repeat. And they never get past that dip because the grass always looks greener on the other side. But what you don't know is that when the grass looks greener, it means that there's a lot more underneath it, right? They call that manure. There's a lot more going on over there that you don't know about it. It smells like So, every opportunity is going to be difficult and there's always going to be those dips. And the thing is, if we never get past that dip, if we never get past that phase, we never see phase four.
And phase four is when things really start looking up. So phase four is called or Alex Hermosi calls it informed optimism. So those few people, the 1% or the 8% or whatever the statistic is that push through that valley of despair, they get into this phase and that's when things start looking up, right? Something just kind of shifts and they're not quite at the finish line just yet. They're not where they want to be just yet, but they understand, okay, this is where we're at, right? I understand how the business works now. I understand what it takes, and I'm willing to do what it takes to get there. I can see the gap between where I am now and where I need to be, and I see a clear path to get from A to B. So, let me give you my personal example. November 2023, I hit that valley of despair. Everybody was quitting on me. Felt like all my policies were charging back. And then I just stuck it out for a few months. I kept on doing and kept on studying and kept on you know uh even networking and trying to ask around see what other people are doing to get past these uh you know these challenges and then December I remember reading a book that told me to track my numbers and closely monitor them or else I was not going to know what the hell's going on. So I said maybe I should try that. Started tracking my numbers started monitoring my activity and that gave me a clear perspective of where I was and what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be. And that helped me understand my personal numbers that for example I had a 30% close rate meaning that out of 10 people that I could present to three people would end up buying. So when I saw those numbers I said okay cool. So now I understand what it's going to take for me to get to where I want to be. If I want to make 10,000 a month plus and I'm only making six then I just need to do double the activity that I'm doing now and I will get there. That's all that I have to do. And what do you know? It's exactly what I did and it's exactly what happened.
And that brings us to the fifth stage of entrepreneurship, which is achievement. This is when you figured out what the real problem was. Because a lot of times that's the other thing is what we think is our problem is not actually our problem. But that's I think that's a topic for another video. But we figured it out and we figured out the solution. We made it happen. The money starts to show up. You start to feel more confident, right? I I finally hit the milestone I had been trying to achieve for the past year or two. And then what happens after that? You take that goal and you 10x it. And then you repeat the process. But the difference being, you've already done it once. You've gone through those five phases before. You know what to expect for next time. You know it's going to be hard, but you also know it's going to be possible. So, you pretty much know what to expect. And the funny thing is, even though you know what to expect, it's still going to get you. You're still going to be excited to hit your next goal. And then you're going to find out, oh, this is harder than I thought. And then you're going to get to that valley of despair where it just everything feels like it's collapsing and the walls are like caving in. But if you work at it hard enough and you do what you got to do and you stick it out long enough, you get past it, you get to phase four and then eventually achievement and then you 10x it again, right? And this is how people get to the levels that you and I are trying to get to is because they understand the game.
And here's the other thing, that dip that we all have to get through at some point, that is what makes this worth pursuing. I know that it sucks when we get there. I know it's like it feels like the worst thing that we ever have to live through. And it does sometimes it doesn't it feels like I don't even know if this is worth it. But those dips in our lives are what makes things worth pursuing because look, it's real simple. We value what most people can't have, right? When something is scarce, and if you're in sales, you know this, right? The scarcity, that's a sales tactic as well, right? When when people go, "Hey, I only have five spots left or whatever, right? They don't most people don't do it, right? But that's the idea. So you should know when something becomes scarce, it becomes by nature more valuable. So that which is more difficult to achieve also becomes more valuable and it makes it worth the pursuit. If everybody in the world had six-pack abs, right, then no one would give a [ __ ] about them when you have them. If everybody in the world was making a million dollars, well then a million dollars wouldn't mean like it it just wouldn't be special. It wouldn't be valuable. And realistically, it would probably mean that the value of the dollar goes down. So now we just have a new benchmark we have to hit, right? If anybody could be the CEO of, you know, a billion dollar company, then the position itself would be a lot less valuable and it would pay a lot less. I say this all the time about sales, right? If this were easy, then we wouldn't get paid so well to do it. The reason there's such a huge pay gap between top producers and non-producers is because it's hard. And the reality is those people that do quit too early in the business are the ones that allow the top producers to get paid more because they're getting all the clients when all the other agents quit. It's how it works. Is it fair? I don't know. I mean, I I I honestly would argue yes, but maybe it's not. And what? What are we going to do about it other than get after it?
Now, going back to how people quit, how most people lie to themselves uh by saying, "Hey, I'm not quitting. I'm just trying something new." Let's go back to that topic. So, why do people do that so much? Where does that even come from? Uh, and there's actually a term for it, right? It's called shiny object syndrome, which a lot of entrepreneurs have, by the way. And a lot of people that are, you know, in this kind of space, they're just looking for the next easy thing, right? The next shiny object. I think a lot of it, why it feels so, I'm going to say normalized to do so is because of the bull advice that's spewed on Instagram about how most millionaires have like seven income streams or whatever that, you know, however the saying goes. So, I used to believe that and and you know what, maybe it is true. It probably is true. But here's what a lot of people miss and here's what I've seen from, you know, hanging around actual millionaires and people that have the lifestyle that I want is people who get to that level of success. They didn't get there by having seven different income streams. They got there by focusing and mastering and being the best at that one thing. Then when they got there, they diversified. I had to learn that the hard way. See, when I started in entrepreneurship, I tried drop shipping and then I did fitness coaching. Uh, and then I did something else. I forgot what the other thing was. And then uh and then it was also insurance, but it was like I was doing like two or three things at a time with each one. My thought process was, well, I'm going to do all of these and I'm going to see which one sticks or which one works. The reality is they can all work if you double down on one because it's not about picking the perfect opportunity. It's about picking the one that we're willing to commit to because most of them can and will work if we commit to making it work. Let's just be real, right? So, just think about it like this. Let's say you're trying to do five different things. Real estate, insurance, crypto, drop shipping, and I don't know, whatever other thing. You are no longer competing in one market. You're competing in five. That means that you're multiplying how many people you have to compete with by five. And how arrogant do we have to be to believe that our 20% effort is going to outperform someone's 100%. I mean, how arrogant can we be to believe that we're that good? We're not. Unless you're like Elon Musk or something, right? Most of us are just not that special. And it is what it is. It's okay. I don't know. I I've never seen anyone truly win at anything by half committing. Which is why, as hard as this can be sometimes, I have no interest in looking anywhere else or doing any other thing. This is my thing. This is what I'm committing to and this is what's getting 100% of my focus. And that is the only reason I've been able to get as far as I have.
Now, does that mean that I will never stop doing this and that we should never quit anything at all? I don't believe so. I think there is a right time to quit. And matter of fact, I read a book once called The Dip by Seth Goden and it's actually just about that. I think the subtext is knowing when to quit and when to stick. And the main idea of that book is that smart entrepreneurs know how to identify the difference between a dip, right, which is just a challenge that someone has to go through in order to achieve what they want and a I think he called it culde-sac, which is basically a dead end. So the difference between when something is difficult and something is just, let's say, hopeless.
So I know earlier I said that I almost quit this business. However, I did actually quit once. So, where I got my start, and I've never really said this on camera, but um I don't I don't really care. So, where I got my start in this industry was was actually with a company called World Financial Group. And if you're not familiar, World Financial Group, they have a a recruiting business model where it's basically the way that you move up, right? And the way that you progress in that company is directly through recruiting. All right. So, agents get paid a very low commission when they start and uh the overrides between upline and downlines are usually pretty significant for that reason, right? Because the whole idea is to just recruit as many people as you can and let the winners win and the quitters quit basically. Now, at the time when I was there, um I was really bought into their mission of No Family Left Behind. You know, I truly believe that we were helping people, that we were helping families, you know, changing people's lives for the better. And I was really excited about building, you know, this massive agency that was going to give me passive income and financial freedom, all this stuff. But over time, as I analyzed the business model that we were in, I I started to realize how misaligned I was with the true mission of the company or or the true I'm going to say the true business model. And here's the thing, do people make money there? Absolutely. Right? There's people that are making a million dollars, 2 million, 10 million. Like people can absolutely make money in that model, but at what cost? And this is just my opinion, right? So like if you're in something like that and you love it, then cool, keep doing it. I don't give a it has nothing to do with me. I'm just sharing my experience. So my problem was I found that people were, you know, being pushed to recruit really fast, which I mean, we knew that and we were okay with that. We were bought into, you know, we we believe that we were helping or changing people's lives doing so. But then we were told to, you know, basically recruit them and then sell to their friends and family before they got their license. So the upline would keep those commissions and then by the time the new the new recruit was licensed, they'd have to find someone else to recruit and then sell to their war market. And you know, basically they would have to figure it out. The more I analyzed it and and the more that I, you know, the more that I did it, I I started to realize it felt like the business model was less about serving clients and more about constantly cycling through new recruits, you know, like kind of like this turn and burn model, bringing people in and then turning them out and, you know, let whoever can figure this out stick around and whoever doesn't, let them go. And I do understand why that can work for some people, but for me, it just didn't align. When I joined, my idea or my goal was to bring people on and give them the best shot at succeeding. And I just found that that wasn't really aligned with how that business model was supposed to go. It's just not right. Say what you want. It's just not. Especially when we're getting paid at like a 20 to 30% compensation and then, you know, you look at other IMOs where most most IMOs are offering 100% plus. you know, it just it just didn't make sense to me anymore. So, I wouldn't go as far as to call it a scam. Like I said, it works for some people. They make money. Cool. Good for them. But I realized it just didn't align with it no longer aligned with my values. And so, that was an instance that was like the informed pessimism stage, right? So, I I had gone through it once where I just, you know, my first dip in that company was just learning how to, you know, recruit my first agent, for example, right? And and sell my first policy. But once I realized how the business model actually works, that I would consider the informed pessimism stage, right? Where I started analyzing, okay, what it's actually going to take to get past this next dip that's coming. And I had a decision to make is what I have to do and the agents that are going to have to suffer. Like, is it worth pushing through this dip in order to get to the other side? And I decided that it wasn't. I just wasn't. Even if I made it to the other side, I wasn't going to feel good about myself. Just me personally. So, I decided to exit. Or if you want to say it bluntly, I decided to quit. I [ __ ] quit.
Now, I do remember some people [ __ ] on me for that at that point, right? I had somebody basically uh pointing fingers going, "Oh, I guess you're a quitter, right? I knew you didn't have it in you." Whatever. I went on to make three times the income that I had made at that place the following year. And then I almost tripled my income again the next year. Right? So I went from making $14,000 at that company to 60 grand, so an actual livable income and then to 150,000 the following year. Quitting that place was the best decision that I had ever made. And it's all because I chose a dip that was worth pushing through.
So I said in my last video, a lot of people push this narrative of winners never quit and quitters never win. I think that's [ __ ] and a lot of times it's used to manipulate us. Don't buy into it. There are absolutely reasonable and forgivable reasons to quit. I'm even going to say strategic reasons to quit. However, on the other hand, how do we know when we're strategically quitting or we're just being a right? Like how can we tell the difference between just a rough patch and a road that we just should have never really pursued in the first place? Well, I think that book that I mentioned earlier, the dip gives some very valuable insights on understanding that difference. So, he gives us three questions to ask ourselves when we are considering exiting and pursuing a different venture. Okay, number one, am I panicking? Am I just in the middle of a dip? Is it just getting very challenging and now it, you know, feels like the walls are caving in and I'm just panicking? Is it possible that that's what happening? that I'm just, you know, so overwhelmed and frustrated that I'm not really thinking clearly and, you know, and instinctually I just want to put my hands up and, you know, wave the white flag and let this go. Is that what's happening? I think that's the first thing to consider. Am I just panicking?
Question number two, who am I trying to influence? I'm not going to go too into this one, but this is basically he just in the book talks about how there's a difference between, you know, being overly persistent with a prospect, for example, and then being persistent in an actual venture in a in a market, for example. Is it a good idea to follow up with someone who told me no, like a prospect who I was trying to sell a policy to and rejected me. Is it smart to follow up 30 times after that? Probably not, right? Because it gets to a point where you you just become annoying and you just push them away further and it's just never going to happen. Sometimes you can't change one person's mind. But if we're influencing a market, it's a different story, right? So there's a difference being annoying and being persistent in a market, right? So just the overall business that you're running, pushing through hard times, and you know, let's say for example, being relentless with your prospecting, with your outbound calling, right? Like there's there's a difference there, right? So, I don't think that that applies a ton to this conversation we're having here. Um, so I'm going to move on.
So, question number three, what measurable progress am I making? When it comes to business and personal development, I believe that there are only two ways to go. You are either growing or you are dying. I personally don't believe that there is any stagnation, right? You don't just stay the same. You're either getting better or worse. You know, if you are plateaued, well, there's other people that are getting better. So, in comparison, by nature, you are getting worse. Now, in my last video, we touched a little bit on getting support from your upline, right? From from your support group, whatever you're in. And I made a statement. I said, when you pick your upline, first of all, pick them carefully. But once you've picked them, the best thing to do is usually going to be to just commit, you know, kind of all in a sense, submit, right, to whatever it is that they say to do and commit to doing it all the way. No matter how crazy it might sound, no matter how like regardless of whatever, you already picked them. you picked them as a leader, so let's do what they say because if we picked them as leader, that means at some point we trust them to get us the results that we want. So, let's trust them then, right? Let's do it. Let's go all the way with this. And so, what I said in the video is if we find that we do everything we were told and a couple months go by and no progress is made, then it's probably time to pick a new upline. It's probably time to jump ship because at the end of the day, that's all we have in this industry, right? It's the guidance, right? I mean, that's the point of having hierarchy structures as opposed to just like doing your own thing directly with and partnering up with uh carrier like insurance carriers yourself. The whole point is so that we can get guidance and a sense of direction. If we're doing everything that we are supposed to do and and we're actually doing it and we're tracking it, we're monitoring it, right? We're measuring it and nothing's happening, then it's probably time to move on. That is what I have seen to be infective. Not only for myself, right, with the instance of uh where I was before, but also just with other agents who I've seen. I'll be honest, I used to judge everybody, anybody who would quit at all because that's kind of the culture of where I had come from. And uh in WFG was, you know, basically every everyone who leaves is a quitter and they're never going to make it. So I I believed that and so anytime I heard that someone had jumped from one agency to another, I just I labeled them a quitter, right? Or a bouncer is what I used to call them. But then I I started running into stories of people that were, you know, they had succeeded at a very high level. Like David Duford, for example, he's a very well-known life insurance final expense YouTuber guy. I just heard his story recently and I guess he had quit like five time. I might be exaggerating that, but from what I remember, I think he said he quit like like five times or something crazy and then now he's doing multi-millions with, you know, whatever he's got going on. So sometimes it really can be that, you know, maybe we're just not in the right place and we need to move on. And I think that's okay. But the point of this video is to help us identify the difference between a dip and a dead end. Because if we just keep on quitting before the dips, and we do it repeatedly, we're just going to relive the same six months over and over and over again. And I promise you, nobody wants that.