BHC - Mike Heyward & Blake Whittle

During a phone call, Mike Hayward shares his recruiting tips. He emphasizes the importance of having a positive mindset and approaching recruiting as a great opportunity. He suggests getting into a target-rich environment and finding common ground with potential recruits. Mike shares his own experiences, including how he found prospects in the military and through personal connections. He also discusses the importance of taprooting and building teams through recruits. Mike explains the CHAMP list, which helps qualify potential recruits based on their competitiveness, work ethic, ambition, money motivation, and positivity. He recommends reaching out to recruits through co-prospecting and leveraging warm market connections. Mike emphasizes the value of taprooting and highlights how Blake Whittle played a crucial role in his own success. Good morning, Adam. Good morning. Mike is on. Good morning, Mike. Good morning. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I'm excited. Well, man, we're glad to have you on. Excited to hear what recruiting tips you have for us this morning. Larry will be on listening as well. He's out there in Colorado with the Andy Young Group, doing their big event this weekend in Keystone. Okay, great, great. Yeah, what time does – what time, I think it's 7.50, I'll start speaking. Is that accurate? Well, it'd be 7.45, 8.45 Eastern. So where are you located? Where are you located? I can't remember. Louisiana. It's 7.42 here. Okay, perfect. Yeah, so we'll go from – we'll start here in just a minute or two. I'll do the countdown and then let you run for about 12 minutes with your best recruiting tips. And if I need to, I'll jump in with a question. Run for about 12 minutes, then we'll switch over to the main call with Blake Whittle and Larry also, and we'll keep you on if that's all right so you can jump in with a few questions on the main call as well. Sounds great. Yeah, I just got a phone with Blake. He should be hopping on any minute now. Okay, perfect. Yeah, we're excited to have both of you guys on this morning. Looking forward to a great call. Wonderful. Well, I appreciate it very much. We're going to get our folks on there too. Sounds good. Hey, Adam, I'm on here too, buddy. How you doing, man? Good to see you. Good to hear from you. Yeah, great to have you on this morning. We're excited. Absolutely, absolutely. Adam, do you have a – I don't know why I didn't get it this morning or I haven't gotten it the last couple weeks. Can you have somebody send me the main number we can send out to all of our teams? Okay, yeah, I'll sure – I'll have Posey text him that information, the main call-in number, listener number. If I got it, I must have missed it. I don't know. I'm sorry about that, Posey. Because I got their main number that we're on right now. Thank you. Yeah, we'll send you the listener line. No problem. Yeah, you know what? I don't think – I mean, I've gotten it for years and years. I don't think I've gotten it. It might be my phone. I got a new phone. But I haven't gotten it in the last probably month, I would say, and I love hearing it. So I don't know if that can include me back on that list or whatever. Well, we secretly tried to remove you from that altogether, Blake, so you wouldn't be able to get on and listen. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. I'm glad I made it back on my way in. I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good morning, everybody. This is Larry. Good morning, Larry. Glad to have you on. Oh, hey, glad to be on. Thank you for asking. Good morning. Thank you. Larry, how have you been feeling? All right. All good? Yeah, everything's going great. Getting better all the time. Yeah, going great. Thank you very much. Good. All right, we'll get started. I'll count us down and let Mike run us through his recruiting tips. Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to our pre-call recruiting tips segment with NSD Mike Hayward. Mike is a $400,000 earner in the Whittle hierarchy. Good morning, Mike. What recruiting tips do you have for us today? Hey, good morning, and thank you so much for allowing me to speak. Yeah, I'm going to jump right into it. When it comes to recruiting, you know, Blake Whittle and Bill Whittle always taught us, you know, you've got to have the mindset that we get to recruit, right, and we've got to remember that recruiting is one of the best, the best opportunity with Primerica, and that's the approach that we have to take. And I think that, you know, whenever I decided to go full time and make Primerica my career, I took that approach every day, right, and the first thing that I did from our coaches, they said, you know, you've got to get into a target-rich environment. That's one of the biggest tips. For me, my market was I was prior military, so, you know, I started recruiting folks in the military because, you know, that's who I had something in common with. That's who it was very easy to strike a conversation with. So I got into a target-rich environment through the military, right, and from there, you know, as things changed, I know, you know, I had a child, so I would get around people that had children. You know, I would use the ballpark, church, different things like that to find people who were like myself, right, and, again, getting into being able to strike up a conversation with people is the key, right, and I think that, you know, just as an example, whenever I decided to go full-time, some of the things that I did was starting prospecting. I became obsessed with prospecting, right, whether it be in the military, whether I would see, I'll never forget, my biggest leader, Derrick Simpson. He's a senior vice president. He's over $400,000 in income. I was out and about prospecting, and I went into a coffee shop, and I saw a young lady. I just struck up a conversation. She was reading a book. It looked like she was studying for a test, so I just asked her. I said, you know, what are you studying for, and from there she saw my shirt. She said, I've heard of Primerica. I prospected her, and then she led me to Derrick Simpson, who, like I said, is now my biggest income earner. Another quick story behind prospecting is I recruited my captain in the military, again, target-rich environment, and I asked him. This is going into the taprooting side of things, which is very, very important when it comes to recruiting. I asked him, you know, who was the first person that would come to your wedding? He said, Jeff Bennett was in my wedding. Well, I went and set an appointment with Jeff Bennett for help with this man's training, and Jeff's wife joined the business. She was a stay-at-home mom. He was in the military, again, like I said, meeting with people that we have something in common with, and she's a vice president in the business and was my replacement leg. So I think that, you know, understanding the entire process, you know, is important. And then getting obsessed about talking to people, that's one of the biggest things. And then, too, I firmly believe that, and Blake can attest to this, you know, sometimes you don't have to say a whole lot. The guy that recruited me simply asked me if I would be interested in doing something else. That's all he said to me. And the thing was I was going to college at night, I was working at Sonic Drive-In, I was reserve military, I was going to school at night, three nights a week, and I didn't even like computers, and that's what I was going to school for. So really what I was doing is I needed something different. This man simply said something to me because he was excited. He didn't know what he was doing. He'd been in the business a week or less. He said, would you be interested in doing something else? I said, heck, yeah, anything's better than this. And then Blake Whittle shows up. And the guy that recruited me is no longer in the business, but Blake took me under his wing, he trained me, he taught me everything that I know, and now I'm his biggest earner and we're best friends, right? So I think that going into the taprooting side of this is the biggest thing with recruiting in our organization. Now, just to give some specifics, if I recruit Blake, however I met Blake, maybe I met him at the gym, the coffee shop, whatever it may be, I would ask Blake, you seem like a sharp guy, a hard worker, do you keep your options open? And Blake says yes, and I recruit him, and we do that. From there, we've got to build teams through Blake, right? So what I'm going to do is we're going to make a list, and that list is going to be who would come to your wedding. I'm going to ask Blake, bear with me, you know, humor me for a second. If you and Lindsey were planning your wedding, who were the first 30 people that you would invite, right? And we're going to make a list, and from there, we're going to start qualifying that list, and we're going to go into what's called a CHAMP list. Okay, Blake's taught this from the very beginning. I know a lot of people probably use this. If you haven't heard of it, CHAMP stands for Competitive, Hardworking, Ambitious, Money Motivated, and Positive, right? So we're going to go through that list, and I'm going to ask Blake, who is the most competitive person that you know, who's the hardest working person that you know? Let's just say he says Larry. I'm going to say, okay, all right, well, give Larry a call or a text, let him know that I'm going to be reaching out to him, and I'll call Larry. I'll say, Larry, you don't know me. My name is Mike Hayward. Blake Whittle gave me your name and number. He had a lot of great things to say about you. He said you're one of the hardest working people that he has ever met. I got to meet with you, Larry. Do you happen to keep your options open? And from there, we just start setting up interviews. But here's the thing. Co-prospecting is something that I did because I had time and I had to do it. I wasn't from where I live now. I didn't know a ton of people, so I had to start with the target rich environment like we talked about. But from there, once I get a co-prospect, I need to do everything I can to get into Blake's warm market, because even though Larry doesn't know me, he knows Blake, and there's some form of borrowed trust there, especially if Blake has credibility with this person. And I think that from there, it's also understanding that I was six generations below Blake. I have people in my organization that don't really fully understand tap rooting yet, and I think they're blowing it in a way, because the reality of it is I was six generations below Blake. That means six people decided that they didn't want to continue with Primerica. If Blake had not plugged into me, I would either still be in the military or flipping burgers at Sonic, right? But he didn't, and as a result, he found me through other people, right? So ultimately, what I try to do is get into the warm market from people, but immediately when we get a direct recruit, that's what we do. We do the champ list, right? And then from there also, I'll go to people who I've written policies on. I'll go to people who I've done investments with, and I'll ask them for a champ list. I'll go and say, hey, listen, Larry, you don't know me. I mean, you know me, obviously, but you don't work with us, but I'm trying to expand. I'm trying to open up offices. I know that you believe in what we do. Is there anybody that you consider extremely hard worker? Is there anybody that you consider very, very ambitious? And again, I will call and say, hey, Larry's a friend of mine. He's a client. He told me that you're extremely ambitious. You're an extremely hardworking person. Would you mind sitting down with me for 20 or 30 minutes so I can show you what we did for Larry and tons of people in the area, right? So from there, again, it's just looking and trying to find people that are looking for another opportunity, or, you know, maybe they just lost their job or whatever the case may be. And the last thing I'll say about that, one of my biggest leaders that unfortunately passed away, my wife, we had left a fast start school, and my wife had put something on social media, you know, just talking about looking for people that want to start a career in the financial services industry. Obviously, you've got to make sure all that is compliant. But this man had moved from California. He had just arrived in Alexandria, Louisiana. He only had plans to stay in there 18 months, and he came to an opportunity meeting. He sat down with us. I showed him what we were doing. I said, listen, we'll get you licensed, all the different things, and he became a $200,000 earner before he passed away unexpectedly. So what I've just shared with you, basically three RVPs of mine, one came from a warm market of my target-rich environment, which is military. Another came from prospecting a girl who quit but led me to Derek Simpson, who was in her warm market. And third was a post from social media. And all of these things came from developing a relationship, getting into their warm market, and building teams through tap rooting. I think that is the biggest thing we can learn today, is effectively tap rooting and using the champ list. So I hope that helps. I've got a couple more, if there's any questions. Yeah, you've got a couple more minutes here if you want to keep going on that. Okay. Yeah, sure. So as an example, this is what we're doing now. And I think that it's important. Right now we've got to get our recruiting back up. We're about to make a huge surge, a huge explosion for the new year, going into 2024. Obviously we're going to start now. We're not going to wait until January. So what I'm doing in about 30 minutes is I'm meeting with all of our licensed agents, and I'm going to ask them, we're going to regroup, and we're going to ask them for who are people that we have not yet met that you think would be good at the business. Who are some people that you think would, you know, maybe their chicken list. This is what I'm going to do specifically. So I'm going to sit down with Seth. I'm going to sit down with Cole. And I'm going to sit down with David here in about 30 minutes, and we're going to make a list. And I'm going to call every one of these people, and I'm going to use some form of, like I said, from the champ list that they gave me, okay. So as an example, I'm going to call Seth's uncle. I'm going to say, listen, Seth told me that you'd be very good at what we do. I've had three offices here in the state. We're going to open up another office. I'd really like to sit down with you and show you what it is that we are doing. From there I'm going to go and I'm going to show him the cash flow quadrant. I'm going to show him what it is that we do. I'm either going to recruit him, or he may say that, you know, this just isn't for me. But from there I'm going to get another list from him. I'm going to get another champ list. While I'm there, if I'm at the coffee shop, if we're at McDonald's, wherever it is, while I'm there I'm going to ask the manager. I'm going to ask the manager, hey, listen, we're looking for people in leadership positions. Do you keep your options open? And from there I'm going to keep running through the numbers because I know there's going to be someone who is looking for a new opportunity going into the new year, but I also know I have to run through the numbers, right? I'm just using the champ list and the relationships of other people to increase my odds of sitting down with these people and having credibility. So, you know, that's one thing that we're going to do. And like I said before, I'm going to get into calling my clients. I'm going to get into calling, you know, the life insurance clients, and I'm going to ask them the same questions. I'm going to ask them specifics, though. I'm not going to ask them, you know, who do you know that might be interested in the insurance industry? Who do you know that might be interested in getting an investment license? No, I'm going to ask them who do you feel like is the hardest working person you've ever met? Who do you feel like is the most positive person that you've ever met? And that way I can call with some specifics. And also, who are some people that you maybe are stay-at-home moms? Who are some people that, you know, that maybe they have full-time jobs, but they're struggling financially, right? That way I can get some specifics and I can call them and say, hey, I'm here to help. I'm here, so-and-so gave me your name and number and said that you're a stay-at-home mom. I know you probably need a flexible schedule. Let me tell you about Danielle Bennett who earns $3,000 and $4,000 a month with us. And I'm going to give examples of people that are in that position, right? That's the key, I think, to recruiting is being able to relate and also to be appealing, to be excited, and most importantly, you know, give hope and faith that something better is out there and the new year is going to be a heck of a lot better than the current year, right? So that's what I got so far, guys. If you have any questions, please ask. Anything I can elaborate on, Blake, if there's anything I left off or anything I missed with our system, please let me know. Yeah, Mike, we're going to jump over to the main call. Thanks so much. Great job this morning. We'll keep you on for some questions with Blake for the main call. To download Mike's recruiting tips and more, visit our website at ydellonwinning.com. Just click on the big hitter link at the top of the website and enter username P-R-I-U-S-E-R and the password go, go, go. All right. We'll do our sound check with our speaker. Good morning, Blake. Morning, morning. You good? Yes, sir. Sound good. And we have Larry on from Colorado. Hello, everybody. Good morning. Hey, Adam. Yes, sir. Hey, real quick, you said about 30 minutes and they're going to open up for questions, huh? Well, no, we're just going to kind of run it. I mean, we're going to run until 10 o'clock. However, we need to run it. Okay, perfect. Once you get going, you go as long as you want. We'll jump in with questions sporadically if we need to. What we will do is right around 9, 30 or so, somewhere around that time, I'll jump in with the mid-call announcements. But other than that, and then we'll get back to it. Love it. Okay, thank you, Blake. All right, perfect. And, yeah, we're excited to have both of you guys on this morning looking for a great kickoff to the Monday with two exciting guys, Blake and Mike. All right. We are right here about one minute before kickoff. But I'm going to go ahead and start it off, and we will get this thing rolling. Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Good morning, Monday morning conference call crew. Welcome to the Big Hitter Call. This is Adam Weindell. It is Monday, December 4, 2023. Let's say hello to our speakers this morning. Good morning, Blake. Good morning, Adam. How are you feeling? Excited about this. Good morning to Larry. Hello, everybody. And good morning to Mike. Good morning. Good morning. I got the cuckoo clock going off in the background here, I see. All right. As of today, there are over 100 RVPs and above, with 30 or more in recruits, and over 100 RVPs and above, with 30,000 or more in premium. There are over 100 below RVP, with 30 or more in recruits, and 26 below RVP, with 30,000 or more in premium. The top five base shops as of this morning are the Curells, with 268 by 156, the Naraines, with 46 by 156, the Onsteds, with 328 by 157, Miguel Elledge, with 162 by 179, and the Finals, with 280 by 273. On today's call, we are spotlighting SNSD Blake Whittle. Blake has 32 RVPs, of which nine are first-generation RVPs. He also has 1,050 hierarchy codes and a hierarchy averaging 400 by 400. Blake recently received his sixth diamond. All right. Let's get the call started. Larry, I'll turn it over to you. All right. Thank you very much. And it's a lot of fun for me to know that we're going to have Blake on this morning. I knew Blake before he even existed. His parents came and spoke to one of our fast start schools in Greensboro, and at that point of his life, he was never going to have kids. They had the perfect life. But somewhere along the way, he got the idea that that would be a good idea. I don't know if anybody's had more fun with their children growing up and doing great things than Bill and Leslie Whittle. And usually when you grow up, spoiled rotten, which is how Blake grew up. Ordinarily, outside you say spoiled rotten, but, you know, Bill's a hard worker. He never had anything given to him. And he probably – there's probably some of that in the way Blake was raised, because Blake became a hard worker and, you know, going to earn everything he got. And it's just miraculous to see someone turn into what Blake has turned into, coming from such a privileged life and upbringing. And it bodes well for the future of Primerica as more and more Primerica kids come into the rank and come into the, you know, senior leadership rank. So, Blake, you're a trailblazer. I'm proud of you, excited for what you've done. And, you know, maybe you could speak to the, you know, what it is to grow up as the son of Primerica, successful Primerica parents, and things they did to, you know, to put you on the right track. But that doesn't keep you from having problems when you get started, because we all have to build – we all have to go on our own road in life. And that road will have obstacles and highs and, you know, high, high highs and low, low lows, and you've got to go through all of those things on your road to the top that you can accomplish in your life. And so I know you've got a lot of those behind you because you've made that – you've pumped through that $600,000 barrier. But once you do that, it's just a matter of staying on track, and here comes the million, here comes the million five, here comes the two, and the compounding – there's no way of stopping the accelerated compounding to your business and your career once you've been through that barrier. So congratulations, and that's just kind of some thoughts I have in my mind that it would be great to hear you talk a little bit about some of those things, but really talk whatever you want to talk about, really. No, Larry, hey, thank you so much. That really means the world to me, and I know I've told you this before. You've been one of the biggest mentors of mine up close and from afar. From the beginning, you've been one of the biggest supporters of mine. From when I started this business at 22 years old, right out of playing college basketball and, you know, being – and the word trailblazer, you know, means a lot to me. I don't know if anybody's ever really said that to me in that manner, but that definitely is a huge thing to me because that's really, to be honest with you, something that drove me more than anything. That's what I set out to do is I wanted to be one of the ones that kind of paved the path for the second and the third generation, and there's so many great ones in the company that are in, and they help and assist. Obviously, Adam being one of those as well, but, you know, I really wanted to be that one that people could point to that went to SNSD like we earned last convention to go to the million like we're on track to do right now, you know, to grow a great business. And I, you know, I never wanted anything given to me to this day. You know, my dad has never given me a recruit, never given me a sale. It's actually almost further – it's almost the opposite of that. We're in direct competition from each other. He has recruited people that I've tried to recruit. My best man, I think, Larry, maybe you talked about this, but my best man at my wedding was already in his base shop when I started. Two of my groomsmen were already in his base shop when I started. None of them were transferred to me. I wrote down a top 30 list. I know how a lot of you guys will go over to a top 30 list, and, you know, he scratched off about 25 of them because he had already seen them. They were already clients. They had already been recruited. So that was my glorious start to Primerica, and I was like, well, how am I going to do this? But I did have an incredible desire to be, you know, in my own terms, in my own name, a great in this company, not just because I was Bill Whittle's son, but because I was going to build something big for myself and for Lindsay and my family. And, really, Larry, you know, that's what we set out to do, and it's been an incredible journey. Mike Hayward, my best friend, my highest income earner, was just on the – and gave recruiting tips, and he's one of the best of the best, the best I've ever worked with. He's got an incredible hierarchy now. He's the national sales director. He's got two $400,000 income earners in his organization, and he's about to go over $500,000. So what, you know, the beginning phase was is I didn't even know Mike when I started, but I knew that I had to develop a team. I knew I had to get great at referrals due to the lack of my warm market that had already been seen from my dad. So, you know, when you say that word trailblazer, Larry, when you say, you know, one of those things, yes, my dad – I did grow up in a world that was, I guess, a lot could consider spoiled. My dad did a lot for me. You know, we traveled and we went to basketball games and football games, Super Bowls. We went to a lot of Michael Jordan games. He surrounded myself with a bunch of winners growing up, and I think that was a huge thing for me. I'm doing that now with my son, Larry. My son's 11. He just turned 11. And, you know, surrounding him with winners, bringing him to basketball games, bringing him to football games, NFL games, LSU games, and watching that with him and having conversations with him, not just enjoying the game, but teaching him, you know, what winners do whenever they make a great play. Also, what do winners do whenever they make a mistake, when they mess up? You know, and it's just so important, those different things and those different traits. We were at a game the other day, Larry, and his quarterback made a terrible pass, and he looked right at the receiver and patted himself on the chest, basically saying, my bad. Even though it could have been considered the receiver's fault, the quarterback took blame for it, and that was a good learning lesson I thought to him about. He writes it in there. It's like, hey, listen, if you're the leader, if you're the best on the team, people look at you, they inspire to be you, you want to be the greatest, you want to be the best, you've got to take responsibility, even if it's not your fault or even if it's slightly your fault, because your teammates are going to rally around you. You've got to accept responsibility to get better. And that's definitely something my dad did for me my entire career, especially early on. I grew up spoiled, but he also pushed me, Larry, a lot. I know you and Adam have a great relationship, kind of the same manner. I was given a lot. A lot was done for me. I had a great lifestyle growing up. That's why I wanted to join Primerica, because I was a Primerica kid. My dad, my mom, just what an incredible lifestyle I had growing up with them. But I wanted that same lifestyle for my family. I wanted the same freedom. And I also wanted the same relationships. I saw my dad have relationships with Collin Semple or Troy Fields or Jason Gills in the same manner I have relationships now with Mike Hayward or with a Lee Brown or a Kevin Kenerson or a Donald and Breanna McNeil or a Derek Simpson. I saw the relationships develop and how they love and they care for each other and how they enjoy being around each other while having great freedom, while making great money. And that was really something that I wanted to be a part of. So, Larry, so at the beginning, you know, what we did, and Mike elated to this a lot, or Mike, excuse me, Mike hit on this a lot a second ago in the recruiting tips part, but the two biggest things that I looked at starting off, and there's two parts to this, is I knew that I had to master recruiting. When there's a smaller market, I knew I had to master recruiting. So anywhere that I went, anything that I did when I joined this business, I said, hey, look, I want to put you in front of my father. Now, a lot of people don't have that opportunity. Again, the negative part of me starting off in the manner I did with my dad is that I didn't have a great warm market. The positive scenario is I had the best, if not one of the best leadership in the company in him. I had a great environment to be around, which helped tremendously, and he always put competition in front of my face. So I knew that if I could go out there, recruit people, talk to people, and get them in front of him, that I would be successful. So I tell the same thing with everybody that I bring in. Listen, if you can put some people in front of me, if I can help you recruit and train and develop people, then you will be successful as long as you stick around and you have the dedication and you don't give up. And that's always what he told me is that, listen, there is not, at that point in time, Larry, and you alluded to this earlier, was that there was not a whole lot of first or second generation, there was not a whole lot of kids of successful Primerica leaders that were really doing much at that time. Again, this was 15 years ago. There's more and more now, for sure. But I definitely wanted to be one of the ones that kind of was at the forefront of that. And so what happened was is that I just started talking to everybody about, hey, my dad runs a very large financial business. We're looking for some people we're expanding. I'd love to get you a meeting with him. I'd love to get you a meeting with him. Now, if everybody listening on this Zoom, if your dad is probably not in the business for a majority of you, so you can't use that verbiage, but you can use your regional vice president or your regional leader. I have everybody just simply say, hey, listen, my good friend is a very successful senior national sales director or senior vice president or regional vice president or regional manager. It doesn't matter what that is. But, hey, I'd love to get you a meeting with him because we're currently expanding our business. We're expanding our firm. And I'd love to show you a little bit more what we do. So I did. I mastered that portion, Larry. And then the second scenario was is referrals. I came up with a referral list because when you have a top 30 list and then your dad or whoever your upline is would scratch off 25 of them and basically say, look, they've already been seen. We've already helped them. They've already been recruited. Then you kind of put yourself behind eight ball a little bit. So what I did is I created a referral list. This referral list basically said, all right, who are the top three people that you know that just got married? Who are the top three people that you know that either just got married or just have kids? Okay, that's number one. Number two is who are the top three people that you know that just left a job for any reason? And this works through the whole thing. So who just left a job for any reason? So that's number two. So that's putting in a lot of things. We're going to go back. Who just left corporate America for whatever reason? And they also, you know, you have also the next one was, you know, they might need life insurance. They just left the job. So that's gone. So that's a big thing. We got a lot of referrals from that. And, Larry, my last regional vice president, her name is Kyla, I got her about three years ago during COVID. We sat down with a client and I asked them that question. I said, hey, who do you know that just left the job? And they mentioned Kyla and Anthony. I met with them. I recruited them. And they became a regional vice president a year and a half later and do an amazing thing. So that was just simply off of a referral list. The next question. I'm sorry, Larry, can you hear me? Can y'all hear me okay? Yeah, we can hear you. I think you have done some fading in and out a little bit. Okay, I'm sorry about that. You did black out there for a minute, but now we can hear you. I'm so sorry about that. Yeah, I'm good now. I don't know why it connected to my car. I apologize. Okay. So in that scenario is that, you know, so the next question then is who are the next referral question is, hey, listen, you know, Adam, if you owned a business, who are the top three people that you would want working for you? Who are the top three people? I got another regional vice president from that about four years ago. I said, hey, look, if you owned a business, who would you want working for you? Now a majority of these people were helping. They're obviously employees most likely. And so they're saying, oh, you know what, this person would be very good or that person would be very good. So then you're getting referrals from that. And then my last referral question on this referral sheet is, who are your best friends? Or who is the maid of honor and the best man of your wedding? So now what I did at the beginning, Adam Larry, is I started getting tons of referrals. I just had so many people to meet with. And here's the thing. A lot of people talk about referrals. A lot of people, you know, mention that. But I was dead set on this, and this was probably the main thing that helped me explode my business and it helped me help others explode their business. Because a lot of people, when it comes to referrals, they just simply ask, hey, who do you know? Who do you know? And a lot of times people are like, well, I don't really know anybody. And it's like, well, that's funny. You've got 1,000 contacts in your phone. You've got 1,000 friends on Facebook. That's a lot of people to not know, quote-unquote, right? So that is something that I really argue. But when you get specific with people, number one, when you're specific and you're serious and you take your business serious and you take getting referrals serious, they will give you referrals. Then it's all a matter of following up and connecting with them. And, again, I always look at it. I know I have at least one product or two products or especially not even that, a business opportunity that I can share with somebody. And I would say 90% of the time when I sit down with somebody, they need one of our products or they need our business opportunity, 90% of the time. So I'm putting the odds in my favor to be able to go out there and help somebody, do something great for somebody. And I know for a fact that with my skills, with a lot of you on here with your skills, and that's what you should tell yourself every morning, with my skills and with Primerica's opportunity, I should be able to close something today. I knew that. I'm going to be able to close something. I'm going to be able to set something up with my skills and what Primerica has to offer. I'm going to be able to close something today, because if I'm that good at this business, and honestly, again, it does take time to develop yourself. My other question is, especially if there's a lot of brand new people in there, are you developing your skills, not just during training? What are you doing outside of that? Are you watching YouTube videos? Are you listening to the big hitter calls? Obviously you are because you're on right now. Are you on Primerica online watching different leaders, watching different videos? Larry, I remember listening to you over and over and over and over again when I joined this business, because my dad always taught me in basketball, and it translated to Primerica, that, yeah, you are going to practice, let's say, in sports X amount of days a week. But the question is, is what do you do outside of practice? Yeah, of course. I tell my team this all the time. I'll say, you know what, we have trainings three days, sometimes four days a week, okay, on Zoom and in person. But my question to you, that's only an hour to an hour and a half, three or four days a week. But what are you doing outside of that? How are you developing your craft, and how are you developing your skills outside of that? Are you on Primerica online? Are you giving people your presentation? Are you overcoming objections? Are you doing all these things, and are you teaching others to do all these things? Because when that happens, that time and effort you put in the beginning, you know, and a lot of our income, and, Larry, you know this, you've taught this for years, a lot of our income in Primerica really boils down to how good are we at setting appointments and giving the presentation. And then number two is how good can we teach others to set appointments and give a presentation? That's a majority of our income, right? You attach recruiting to that, and that's probably almost all of it, right? And so I think that's a very important thing that we all got to understand is that from the beginning are we doing those things? Now, let me transition a little bit, Larry. That was kind of the beginning phase, and I wanted to go in that direction because that's what you hit on, and, again, it meant the world to me. But I've had, you know, that's what means so much is that, you know, when I have somebody like Larry and a lot of the great leaders that have mentored me, like Omar, Jimmy Meyer, and Keith Otto, and I can list my best friends like Glenn and Theo, you know, for them to early on just say, hey, listen, you know, we love the path that you're paving here as a second generation. You don't have to do this, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I always looked at this as, yeah, I don't have to do this, but I want to do this. I love this business. You know, eventually, whatever that might be, now, unfortunately, it almost happened a couple years ago, but, thank God, everything's great with my dad. But, you know, taking the business over. Like, eventually, I will run the Whittle hierarchy, my dad's hierarchy. But the biggest thing that I wanted to have happen, and I appreciated Larry for saying this so many times and a lot of other great leaders, is I never wanted that business passed to me, and people thinking, well, this is not really going to go very well. It's going to get passed to Blake. I wanted to build a big business. I wanted to build a successful business so that if and when and whatever that might be happens, I wanted everybody to know, hey, this hierarchy is in great hands. It's going to grow. It's going to do amazing things. And also, I wanted to surround myself with great people like Mike Hayward and then a lot of other people in my hierarchy, Don and Bria, Derek Simpson, you know, Ali Brown, that are all $100,000 earners, Kenny James that now can help me grow and do big things and take my business and take my dad's whole hierarchy to a totally different level. Okay, so that's kind of the beginning phase of that. Now, the second thing I want to talk about, something that I really believe is just something of the biggest things is that is leaders emerging in this business, Larry. One of the biggest things alongside of what we just talked about is that I wanted to make sure that I developed leaders and that we got leaders emerging all the time. I've heard you talk about that a lot, Larry, throughout the years, but that was something that excited me. So if you're on this call, I'm going to give you five key points really quickly on how to emerge leaders, because you can do – that's why I love this time of year. So let me transition really quickly. Larry, this is my favorite time of year. I love December. I don't know why I have this now, just because I've got kids, and they love Christmas season. But I love December. We've got basketball going on right now. Football is going on right now. It's just a fun time of year. But if I can tell you that this transition right now, everybody listening, that's why I love being on this call today, and I've told my hierarchy this for 15 years, the transition from November to December, how did you close in November, how do you start in December, is going to gauge your business in 2024. Okay, and I'll say that again. How you end in November and how you start in December is going to gauge your business in 2024. This is the most crucial time of the year in my opinion. Why? You've got 30 days left before the beginning of 2024, and I'll give you a couple examples. Guys, there's been years that I have crushed it. There was a year, I'll go back to 2015, okay. I'm sorry, 2014. There's years that I've crushed it, but my November and December were not very good, therefore the next year was not even near as good as the year prior. But on the other side, there's been years that I've had a subpar year, but we crushed it in November and December, and then we created an explosion the following year. Larry, 2014 was probably one of our worst years in Primerica. It was very stagnant, if not decreased. But we had an incredible November and December. We recruited a massive amount of people in November and December. And then what happened in 2015? We went from, you know, not speaking on stage, not winning anything on company trips, blah, blah, blah in 2014. So in 2015, we ran $100,000 base shop, $113,000 base shop. We averaged like 75 by 75 that year. We promoted about three RVPs. All three of those RVPs came from what we did in November and December, and we created a massive explosion in our business. So I'm encouraging you today that if you haven't had the year of 2023 that you've wanted to have, then if you explode your business in this December, if you go find great recruits, I don't know what it is, but I think six of my nine regional vice presidents that are direct to me were recruited in December. I think that's probably a coincidence, but it might not be. But Mike Hayward was recruited in December, who you just heard from a little bit ago. But it's because when you go out there, there's more people out and about in December. More people are looking for better opportunities for the next year. People are looking to better their finances. So what a great opportunity to go expand and explode your business. So if you're not doing that right now, you're getting behind the eight ball for 2024. But if you've had a great 2023, like a lot of you on here have, what are you doing right now? Are you closing strong? It's not just how you start, but it's how you what? It's how you finish. In great Georgia, I don't know if you're a Georgia fan or, Adam, if you're a Georgia fan, but Georgia has had an unbelievable year in football. They started strong. The whole year has been great. They were undefeated. But what happened? They came up against Alabama in the NFC Championship. Boom, they lost. They didn't finish strong. Now they're out of the playoffs, no chance of winning a national championship. They had a great year, great year, but they didn't finish strong. And obviously we'll see how they rebound from that. My question is, is are you going to finish strong? If you've had the year that you've wanted to have, if you've reached a lot of your goals, like me and my hire, we've reached a lot of my goals. My goal is to go over 600 and get close to 700, which we're doing, and make our run for that million. We've hit a lot of goals, but I'm so fanatically focused right now, right now I'm driving to my office in Lafayette, and I'm driving to my office in Lake Charles. Those are a couple hours away from my home office. Why? Because I want to meet with my leaders. I want to get in front of them. I'm ready to expand and explode going into 2024, because I know how important this time of year is. So let me transition into that. That was one thing really quickly. But let me transition to this. I call this when leaders emerge. I know we've got a little bit of a break coming up here in a couple minutes, but I'll make sure I'm doing that. Adam, just interrupt me if you need to. But the first thing is, okay, when do leaders emerge in Primerica? If you're asking yourself, you know, you're prospecting people. Some of the biggest questions I get asked, man, I've recruited a lot of people, but I don't have any districts coming out of that. I don't have any leaders emerging. I don't have anybody coming out that are really, you know, on top of the leaders bulletin or top ten in the state, et cetera, et cetera. Well, what do I do? Well, the first thing is, when leaders emerge, the leader is present and engaged. So let me ask you that right now to everybody listening in. Are you truly present or engaged in your business? And are you present or engaged the majority of the time, five, six, seven days out of the week, meaning are you up at the office early? Do you have high energy on your Zooms? Are you leading the way? Now, if you're listening in, are you on your conference calls? And are you on your Zooms with your cameras on? Are you paying attention? Are you taking notes? Are you just kind of messing around on your phone, not really paying attention? That's not being engaged. If you're on this call right now, not trying to call anybody out, but if you're just messing around on your phone, texting people, blah, blah, blah, you know, you're not truly engaged right now. You've got to engage yourself. That means laser focus in on what you want to accomplish. And also you've got to be present. Are you engaged and present for your team? Do they know you're there? Do you answer their phone calls? Are you there for them? Are you helping them grow their business? Are you helping them when they call you and they ask for your help on an appointment? Are you there for them to help with that appointment? Are you there for them for orientations, for fast start planners, for kitchen tables? Are you just trying to delegate it and pass all these things off to other people? Now, obviously you can reach a certain level in your business where you don't have to do all that stuff, but I'm talking about those who want to take their business to a totally new level in 2024. You've got to be present and you're engaged. Are you also aware, that's what I tell everybody too about social media, are you just scrolling through social media or are you aware of what's going on in your teammates' lives on social media? Their anniversaries, their birthdays, their kids just had a sports game, all those things. One of the biggest tips that I give people about social media, Larry, is that for every time you post about yourself on social media, you need to compliment somebody or say something positive to somebody on social media ten times. It's a ten-to-one ratio. If I'm going to post something about myself or my business, I'm going to tell Mike Hayward, hey, great job on this on social media or happy anniversary to Jeff and Bailey here or incredible job on going regional vice president. I'm going to highlight other people ten times for every once that I post. I've gotten so many clients, so many agents, so many people stick around just simply from how much love I give them on social media versus how many times I post about myself. People eventually will get annoyed how many times you post about yourself, but people will always love and respect how many times you post and compliment others. Are you present? Are you engaged about your business? Number two, the leader is going for something. The funny thing is that two ties into one. Think about that, guys. When are you the most present and engaged in your business? I guarantee it's when you're going after something. I'm always very present and engaged in my business, but when I was going after Senior National Sales Director about a year and a half ago, when I was going after the sixth diamond a couple months ago, I was so present, so engaged, so laser focused. You know why? Because I was going after something. I was so excited to wake up. I was so excited to talk to my team because there was a goal in mind. And people talk about all the time, how do you get your business going? How do you get your mind going? Man, if you are going after something in your life, you're going to be present or engaged. My question is right now, what are you going after at the end of this year, and what are you going to go after in 2024? You should already know. You should already know what you're going after in 2024. Now, you should not spend all this time, okay, in December. All right, I'm not trying to step on any toes here, but there's people that in December, they spend all this time setting goals, doing vision boards, you know, writing their goals down, planning out 2024, but yet you're not working in December. That is the craziest thing that you could ever do this time of year, right? All this stuff, do all these things, but you don't work in December. I would rather you work and give it all you've got in December in 2023 and not do any vision boards. Don't set any goals. Don't do anything for 2024 until January 1, because you know why? That momentum is going to carry you. Now, all the great leaders, the great winners in this business, you can do both. You can get after it in December while setting goals, while vision casting, while doing vision boards, while setting all your goals and planning out 2024 so everything is ready, but don't let up. Don't stop 2023, because the truth is, the ones who are going to succeed the biggest in 2024 are the ones that are getting after it these next 30 days, roughly, of December. It's not the ones who are setting goals and vision casting and doing that all the time. It's the ones who are working, who are building their business, who are out there recruiting and finding new people to lock arms with, new people to take their business to the next level with this time of year. That's the ones that are going to dominate and succeed in 2024. So, you know, are you going for something? I always tell people this all the time. What's so great about Primerica is the optimism for the majority of people that Primerica gives. I think one of the biggest reasons for depression in today, one of the biggest reasons that people are, you know, not having a great mood or, you know, they try to take caffeine all the time or blah, blah, blah, the reason for that is they're either not going after something and they don't have anything to look forward to. See, in life, I believe that causes depression. That causes a retraction in somebody if they don't have anything they're looking forward to or anything they're going after. See, I encourage you right now, what are you going after? But also, guys, what are you looking forward to? I always plan things two weeks, three weeks, four weeks in advance, things to do with my kids, things to do with Lindsay, things to do with my friends that I'm looking forward to so, man, I can work my butt off for a week, two or three weeks up to that point, setting some goals that I'm going after so that whenever I'm going, I'm enjoying that vacation or I'm enjoying that thing with my kids or that heavy event, that sporting event that we're going to. So I encourage you right now, as I close this first part, is that, you know, the leader's engaged. Make sure you're engaged and make sure that you're going for something and you've got something to look forward to. If you have that, man, you're going to be on fire all the time. You don't need caffeine in your life. You don't need these energy pills and things like that. You know what you need? You need something you're going after. You need something you're moving forward to. That's the biggest shot of a five-hour energy I've ever had. So, Adam, I know you've got this big announcement. Go ahead, Adam, if this is a good time. No, yeah, I'll jump in with those. But, Blayne, absolutely, 100%. There's no way to argue that. The level of excitement you have when you're going after a goal, like you said, you don't need all the stimulants, all the, you know, the pre-workouts, this and that. When you know you've got the energy up going after that, you have that natural adrenaline rush all the time, which, like you said, lasts a whole lot longer than a shot of caffeine or this, that, and the other, which you crash off of. So, man, what a fantastic point. All right, mid-call announcements. There's a fine line between mediocrity and greatness. Here are three tools to give you that extra boost this week. First, check out Larry's latest blog, The Power of Building Rich Habits and Keeping Them a Part of Your Routine on ydellonwinning.com. Second, check out Larry's podcast. This week's episodes feature founder of one of the world's fastest-growing iCloud service companies with 350 employees in five offices. Third, listen to this week's call on our replay line or download the call on YDELL on Winning, click on the big hitter link at the top of the page and enter username PRIUSER and the password GOGOGO, both all lowercase. The replay number for this call is 667-771-7907, and the PIN is 982755-POUND. To stay in touch with Larry YDELL, follow on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and be sure to follow at Big Hitter Club on Twitter for all your big hitter updates, and be sure to leave your thoughts and comments on this week's call. All right, Blake, did you want to keep going on some other points? You want us to jump in with some questions? You let me know. Yeah, I have a couple different points. I will say, though, Larry, I will tell you, Adam, I will never turn down a good pre-workout though. Good pre-workout, I got to have that. Yeah. You know what I mean? I know you know that too, my man. Hey, I love that midday, a little midday pre-workout. I'm always going after something, but I'll tell you what, I won't turn that down. You get a good little workout midday and go crush some appointments. Doug, neither will I. I don't take that after 3 o'clock or I'll be up late at night. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And, though, I appreciate you saying that. Also, you know, with Larry, and this is not just a plug, I'm serious about that, I've been listening to Larry's podcast forever now, probably if not the most listened to, one of the top two or three I listen to on my phone. But always when I'm driving, always when I'm doing, I'm listening to Larry, getting better, and I think those are things that are so important, such a great podcast for those of you who are not listening to it right now. But, yeah, let me give three more quick points to add on to those leaders emerging. If you don't mind, Adam, and then, yeah, to ask whatever you want. Go right ahead. But number three, number three, guys, is the leader creates a value gap. Okay, what does that mean? I always wanted the people in my organization to look to me that I'm going to provide value to them. So what does that mean in your business, that you're always working hard? You know, they always look at Michael Jordan. We lost you. We lost you there, Blake. Blake, we've lost you. His Bluetooth might have hooked up or something. Yeah. He'll figure it out here in a second. I hope. Mike, you want to expand on your round, Blake, all the time. You want to jump in there, Mike? Yeah, absolutely. Blake was going into adding value, and I'll say this, and Larry alluded to it. Some of the things that Blake did in the early part of my career when I was part-time is he was always working. He was always out in the field. He was always, you know, competing and, you know, and it meant a lot because, like you said before, you know, Blake didn't do it for the money. He set the example, and it was one of the most inspiring things, right? He's always out there fired up, excited, always positive. So, you know, sometimes I'd get uncomfortable if I called him and I had a bad attitude, he wouldn't let me stay there, right? He would make sure that my mindset got back where it needed to be, and I never, early on, I never had to worry if my leader was working, right? He was always out in the field. He was always traveling. I'd give him a call at 8 o'clock at night. He'd be driving back from Lake Charles after doing a night of appointments, two-hour drive back to Baton Rouge, and he's always inspired us that way, and even today, you know, still rocking and rolling, every day driving over to Lafayette to build his hierarchy, but also getting back and, you know, going to all the ballgames, just doing it all, right, creating that value gap but giving us something special to look at and to see, and I think that that's one of the things that we don't talk about enough with Blake, you know? Not only that, but having the attitude of gratitude for his people is one of the biggest things that I've been able to see and learn from Blake, all right? And I know that with this new wave, 600,000, now he's going after 700,000, the way he is working and preparing, it's an inspiration to us all, and I think that's what he, you know, ultimately what he wanted to go into, it's never been easy. Yeah, Mike, sorry to cut you off. He's back on. Blake, you got cut off right when you started talking about Michael Jordan there. Yeah, I'm so sorry about that. I appreciate what Mike said. I always think that, you know, really quickly because Mike hopped in there and are we good now? Can you hear me? I'm so sorry. I don't know why that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're good to go. Good to go. No, that's my dude right there, Mike Hayward. I appreciate so much about what he said, because he's done that exact same thing for me. You know, when you lock arms with somebody like that, and we're talking about a value gap, and me and Mike have always done that together, you know, but when you get that value gap, I always, now Mike Hayward, who you just heard from, is my best friend in my life, okay, not just my business partner in Primerica, but best friend in my life. But I always wanted Mike to know kind of what he was talking about, hey, I'm in this with you. I'm going to work hard with you. I'm traveling the roads with you. I'm going to be that example. Now, we're going to have a lot of fun together. You know, we're going to create a great life for our family. Of course, we're going to take time off and have a lot of fun, and me and Mike have the most fun when we spend time with each other. But it was also, hey, we're traveling the roads. We're working. We're going to build this business so that when we get together, man, we're having so much fun. That's a value. I also, you know, me and Mike talk every day. It's crazy. Mike's the national sales director, about to be $500,000 earner. I'm a senior national sales director, soon about to be seven. But we talk every morning. And people are like, well, why do you, because we're always shooting things back and forth to each other. I'm always asking him for advice. He's asking me for advice. And I think that's a big deal in this business. That makes this business so much more fun. It makes it enjoyable. It allows you to latch on and lock arms with somebody. And I think that's what carries people to the next level in their business. You have somebody to talk to when you're down, somebody to talk to when you're up. And I would really always encourage a lot of you guys to do the exact same thing, but to tie into what I was saying, you know, Michael, Jordan, and Kobe, not only did their teammates look up to them for advice and for work ethic and for practice plans and workout plans, et cetera, but so do the coaches. Bill Jackson always looked at those two and would seek advice from those two. I'm reading a book called Relentless by Tim Grover, if I'm believing that. It talks a lot about this. But they were so admired because they always had a value gap. They were always working. They were always getting better. They were always mastering their craft. And that's what happens when you have people, you know, look up to you for those different things. They always want to come to you for advice. You know, I never wanted Mike, you know, we've been doing this 15 years together, I never wanted Mike to go, you know what, I just don't like being on Blake's, you know, Zooms anymore, Blake's trainings anymore, because I'm just not getting much from it. It's not fun. It's not enjoyable. I never wanted that to happen. I always wanted it to be a scenario where our leaders, whether they've been in for a month or whether they've been in for 10 years, I always wanted to create a value that when they get around Blake, when they listen to Blake, not only are they going to learn a lot about Primerica, they're going to learn how to make money in Primerica, they're going to learn how to save money in Primerica, they're going to learn how to better their finances, but also, you know what else the value gap's all about? The value gap's also about how to be a better person, right, how to be a better father. I think a lot of people just stick around me sometimes because they just know that I can help them become a better father. I can help them become a better husband. I can help them become a better person, and that's what a value gap is all about, right? The last couple of things is that the leader prioritizes, okay? The leader always prioritizes certain things. What does that mean? Are you making things a priority in your life, or you just have a schedule where you're kind of just winging it? Your daily schedule, your daily planner has got to be the most important thing at the beginning of your day in your business. Why? Because you've got to set priorities of what you're doing. You've got to set priorities of what you're doing, where you're heading, and what you're doing that day because we all know we can get distracted. But my question to everybody, and we hear this all the time in Primerica, but what has distracted you the most? What has distracted you the most, and I wrote this down the other day, what has distracted me the most that I maybe could have been at $750 this year instead of $650? You know what I'm talking about? Throughout the year, what did I not do this year? What was my distractions? And I wrote down a couple things. Now, some of them were positive. Some of them were like keep my skin tamed, traveling with Lindsay and stuff like that. So those are all positive things. Those are things that I decided to do. But maybe if I would have done that a little bit less, I could have probably been at $750 or $800,000 versus $650 this year, right? So the question is, is what has distracted you? What are you not prioritizing? And my opinion, that if your priorities, right, if you have three to four things as your priorities, you really don't have time for much else, right? If you want to, you know, get in a good physical shape, grow your business, and be a good family man, that's pretty much all you've got time for. You know what I'm talking about, Adam? Like you don't have time for much else. If you want to be great at Primerica, you know what I'm talking about, great physical shape, which helps your mental, which helps your business, and a great family man, you might have time for this and that, but you don't have a whole lot of time to be great at golf or great at hunting or fishing or great at, you know, a pickleball. You know what I mean? Like you can do those things as hobby and fun, but if you want to be great, you've got to pick three or four things you want to be great at and laser focus on them and make those priorities. And the last thing is that leaders create unity. That's the fifth thing, is you've got to create unity in your business. That's something that, listen, there's times in my business that, man, maybe I didn't agree with what Mike said. It's been very, very few times. Maybe me and Mike, and, again, he's a big leader. He's incredible at this business. You're not always going to agree with people in your organization. You're not always going to, quote, unquote, get along with everybody in your organization, although as a leader you should try your best to do that about 95% of the time. I can tell you that in our business we have had very, very little issues, very, very little problems as far as getting along and lacking unity, but you know what? As the leader, you've got to take the high road. And I heard somebody say this early in my business that, you know, you can go win an argument, but what did you really do in that scenario? Sometimes, you know, you've got to – I was listening to a guy talk about this the other day. He was like, you can't win an argument with a stupid person. You know what I mean? It's like they're just going to try to fight and win, and you can't win an argument with that. You've got to be the one that's above reproach. You've got to be the one that creates unity. No matter if there's a little bit of miscommunication or maybe there's an issue here and there, as long as you are always creating unity within your business, then, man, you are going to have a great – I wanted Mike to know, hey, I'm in this corner. Mike, I need you in my corner. I'm in your corner. I wanted all of our great leaders, 33 regional vice presidents, and that's a lot of vice presidents to create unity with, but I just want them to know, listen, I have your back. I need you to have my back. We don't have to do everything together. We don't have to travel together. We don't have to even do a lot of our Zooms and training together, but you know what we need to do? When we come together for events or conventions, we need to have unity. We need to know we have each other's back. We need to know that nobody's talking down or bad about anybody in the hierarchy because this is a team. This is a family, and we've got to create the absolute most unity we can. So I hope those five points help, Adam, and, yes, absolutely, I'll open it up for any questions you all have. Yeah, Blake, I 100% agree with you on everything you were saying, and, like you said, if you're going to focus on three things, you know, family, physical fitness, and work, and, like you said, you've got Mike here with you, but the right training partner, the right partner in each of those is just insanely invaluable. To have the right wife or the right girlfriend, the right training partner in business, the right training partner in your physical fitness thing, you're not going to be 100% mentally in anything every single day. But when you have that right training partner and they know that it's their day to pick up the pace, to get you in the right mood, to put up with a little bit of attitude, to get you back on the right place, that is invaluable. And if you have the wrong one there, it can completely and destroy whatever the situation is, relationship, business, or, you know, your workouts or whatever. I got to tell my dad, I'll tell you real quick, I got a great buddy of mine I've known for 20-some years, and back and forth, and he started coming to the gym again, and I've met him a few times to work out, and he's a great guy, I love him to death, but, man, if I go to the gym with him, I know he's going to be talking the whole time. I mean, I'm there to get a job done and get out, and he likes to go for the, you know, it's a chance for him to get away, talk a little bit. I'm like, I just can't go in there and spend my time working out with him because I'm there to get a job done and go hard and get out, and he's there for more of a social hour. You know, that's why, like no offense to anybody, but that's why he looks the way he does and that's why I look the way I do because I'm there for a job. But you're absolutely right on all those things, Blake, including, and one of my favorite things you mentioned there was not wasting time arguing with an idiot or somebody that's not going to agree with you. Who cares if you do win the argument? I've got a buddy of mine that's the master of that, and I've gotten a lot better at it over the years, but a buddy of mine might correct it. Anytime anybody says anything to him that's completely not right, he just says, okay, perfect, fantastic. You know, never an argument of any kind. Why waste your time? Exactly. Great job so far this morning, Blake, and we've got about another 15 minutes here. I'm going to let Mike jump in with a question, and then after that I want you to talk a little bit about the dream a little bit. You know, you've put in the effort, you've put in the work, you're still putting it in. What are some of the things that you're able to do because of Primerica with your income that, you know, we don't – it's just a blessing here because any time the company goes through a recession, it seems like Primerica almost – it seems like almost every time grows bigger, you know, because those are the times when you get the people that are looking for something else that are having a hard time, but Primerica almost – I don't know if it ever really goes through a recession, you know, it always almost grows. It grows during the good times and it explodes during the bad times. So I'm going to let Mike jump in with a question and then go back to you and talk about all the things you're able to do and things you're able to do with your family and friends and the life you're able to live because of the company. But Mike, jump in with a question real quick. Will do, Adam, thank you, and I appreciate it. Blake, I think one of the biggest things that we could share with the group is I noticed when you were going on your – obviously we all have to direct recruit, right, if we're going to go through another explosion, we've got to direct recruit, train and develop new agents, and I know when you were making your $600,000 run, you found a new agent. His name was Dwight. Would you mind – my question is how did you – and I think he's got like 12 to 15 sales already in like six weeks just past his exam. So my question is how did you find Dwight, your new direct, and how did you get him off to such a fast start, you know, in getting him to district leader in less than a month? Hey, Mike, yeah, great question. So, yeah, when I was on this run, a lot of times when people make a run, like obviously we've got a company trip just in, right, and I don't know if some people made it, some people don't, but a lot of times at the end people start getting frantic and they turn their focus totally on closing sales versus understanding that if you recruit one or two people, you can go close the most sales through those one or two people if you do it the right way. So we were right around the corner from the Six Diamonds, you know, and about a month prior I was like, I've got to go get two or three directs that I can go train quickly because if I can get two or three directs, I know I can close 10 or 15 more sales than I'm already going to do by just simply going out there and getting in a warm market. So what I started doing, Mike, is I just started messaging and calling people that I had seen and followed up with and got numbers over the following year that either didn't work out or that I forgot to call. And so I messaged them and I ended up getting three directs from that. Okay, one of them I just messaged and said, hey, you know, looking to have a couple people to partner up with in business, replicate with you. He said, yes, we did it once there. Now, Dwight, this guy that I just recruited, just got licensed. You know, I was just like, hey, man, how you been? What's been going on with you? And it just was, you know, a random great scenario where he was like, man, I just left this place called Elite where he was working because I just left there and I'm looking for something new to do. I mean, so that just really, to be honest with you, fell on my lap. But let's be honest, guys, when you are working, when you're reaching out to people, that was probably one of 30 people I reached out to, you're going to get one like that out of 30. You're going to get two like that out of 30. But if I would have only, Mike, reached out to five people, I probably wouldn't have gotten that. And some people think, well, I'm going to try these things two or three times and I went and tried these things five or six times and it doesn't work out, and then they just give up on it. And that's the craziest thing that people can do is people give up too soon. You go recruit people and it doesn't work out with one or two people, so then you go, you know, I'm just not going to recruit anybody. I'm just going to go do securities or closed life insurance sales. And you know what? That is what it is. But the truth is that it's going to work out. I recruited Mike. Mike, I recruited you. You know that. I had already recruited 150 people that year that I recruited Mike. Sure enough, it was my first year in business, I believe, or actually it was only six months. We had recruited 150 people, and then we got Mike in December of that year, and he's the biggest income earner that we have. So I didn't give up after 150. I kept going knowing that I can find my superstar, and I did, as long as I keep doing the right things long enough. And that's really what it was. And then Mike, whenever he got in, man, I was like, all right, let's go. He was ready to rock and roll. We hit the ground running. We created a top 30 list. And I just said, hey, man, who are the top 15 people we can go see right now? And he wrote those down. We went and met with them. We closed, I think, 15 out of 17, you know, the first 15 out of 17. Great market, great credibility, obviously with Mike's skills. When you match somebody's credibility in their market, which is if it's good, with the great skills of a lot of you guys, man, this is easy. So, man, we closed about 15,000 in premium within 30 days. Then he got licensed, and he's closed another 7,000 in premium within six days after he's gotten licensed. But it's just that, but he's around me all the time. We're training together. I'm talking to him every morning, Mike, like I talk to you throughout the years. He's listening to things on POL. He's learning his presentation. He's got his clothes on his own now. So, guys, you can expedite people getting trained quickly, but you've got to make sure that you teach them the right things to do and operate with a sense of urgency. And you know what I've learned, Mike, and, again, such a good question, my new license agent needs a division now. He's only been in for 60 days. But he had a sense of urgency, and you know why? Because I had a sense of urgency. Why did I have a sense of urgency? Because I was going after the pick of diamonds. So, guys, all those things are so correlated. If you are going for something, when you bring somebody in, they're going to latch on to your excitement. They're going to latch on to your sense of urgency. Then they're going to go after something, and, man, you're going to create something so special here in this company. Great question. All right. Blake, go ahead and tell us a dream a little bit. Tell us about your life and the things you're able to do with your kids, your wife, your vacations. You know, talk about all that kind of stuff that you put in the work, you put in the effort, and you're able to enjoy that by all these different things, taking your kid to games and meeting these different ones. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, my dad and my mom did that so much for me, and I wanted to emulate that. Now, you know, I think throughout the years, there's been nothing that I've learned more than this year. There's nothing that's excited me more than this year because this year, excuse me, my income, you know, in primarical, went up about $100,000 this last year. These last 12 months went up about $100,000 from $550,000 to $650,000. But I also took more vacations this year, traveled more this year, than I have in any year of my life. I did more things with my son. But, you know, that's what the greatness of primarical is. When you put out the time and effort and energy for that, eventually those rewards pay off. Now, the difference, though, is, Larry, while I tell the dream, Adam and Larry, is that when I'm in town, I tell people, I can get more done in one day than most people get done in five days. And that's the difference, though. See, when I'm out of town, I'm out of town. I'm with my kids. I'm traveling. I'm doing things with Lindsay. But when I'm in town, when I get back from vacation, I'm on it. I'm laser focused. I can get more done in four hours than most people get done in four days. I can get more things better done in one day than most people get done in a week. Why? Because I'm not dilly-dallying. Adam, like you just talked about a second ago, I'm here to get a job done. Right? With the gym, I'm not here to stay at the gym for three or four hours and just talk, okay? Some people are just at the office for three or four hours just to talk. I'm up at the office to do stuff and to go create something. I'm traveling to go create something and work my butt off so that I can go spend that time with my family and doing those things I know I need to do. Spend that time with my team, right? But to tell the dream, like we went on, I think it was like 15 vacations this year. But then also what we did is now we have court-side tickets to the Pelican, and that's something that's so cool. We're going to buy on place for the Pelican. But what the even cooler thing is is we're right there. Mike's been to a bunch of games with us. And we're right there with all the players. So whether it's Steph Curry or LeBron, James Harden, all these guys, they walk right by us. They're right next to us. Billy gets to meet almost all of them, take pictures with them, get autographs. And he gets to be within two or three feet from them watching them warm up because of these tickets we bought. And I think that just opens his eyes. So our work and our effort creates what? It creates an excitement and a love and a passion, you know, for our children. They get to see things because of what we do and how we operate, right, and just to travel all over the world and to be able to spend the time I can with Lindsay. But I can't tell you, you know, how much that's meant to me. But to have a business and to be able to – but it all starts back to locking arms with a business partner like I did with Mike. It all starts back to knowing that these times that I was driving 15 years ago, like Mike was talking about, 12 years ago, 11, it all has paid off. It all is paying off. Now, in the moment, in the time, it didn't – maybe it didn't seem like it, right? Like even right now, I don't know if you all can tell, but I'm driving two hours to one of my offices, and I'm driving another hour to one of my other offices. And, you know, this morning, Monday morning, it's December, it's Christmas, did I want to wake up and drive four or five hours all over Louisiana to do this? Not necessarily, but I'm excited about it. You know why? Because I know what it can and will do for my business. I know what it can and will do a year from now or two years from now. If you pay the price, it creates a lifestyle to where, you know, whatever your spouse wants, whatever your kids want for Christmas, that answer is not, I'm not sure if we can afford it, that answer is absolutely. And that's what I wanted to make sure all the time, and I encourage a lot of you guys if you've got whatever it is, 22 days away from – 21 days away from Christmas, is that you do everything you possibly can do to make sure you can say yes to your family. You can say yes in those times when Christmas rolls around. If you can say yes to go help out underprivileged kids for Christmas, to your family whenever your wife wants this jewelry or this purse or these shoes or this car or whatever. When your kids want this Xbox or this toy or this pin or whatever it might be, you guys obviously know what my kids want for Christmas now. Whatever it might be, you know, that's the main thing that you can do. You don't have to say, man, I don't know if we can afford it. The answer is, oh, of course we can do that because we put out that work and that effort. I think that's one of the most rewarding things in this great company, in this great business, and it all starts back, and I'll wrap it around to what Larry said at the beginning, and I appreciate that so much. What wasn't it for me is that, Adam, Larry, I never wanted anything given to me. That's in life. That's from my dad, and that was one of the biggest driving forces for me is that I didn't want anything ever given to me. I wanted to go earn it, and if I go earn it, then pay me what I'm worth. Obviously, from Erica, I think pays you sometimes more than what we're worth, and, man, you'll create an incredible lifestyle, and that's what we've done here because of this great company and also because of great mentors like Larry, like Adam, people that you're able to surround yourself with, great friends, to go and grow this great business together. So I don't think there's anything better. Not only the lifestyle we're able to live, but, man, just the people from Erica, the relationships you're able to build, like I have with Larry and Adam and obviously Mike throughout the years. There's nothing better, nothing more important than that, and there's nothing like this holiday season to know how grateful we are for what we've got, but also knowing there's so much more to give, there's so much more to do, there's so much more to accomplish, and that's what I'm fighting for for sure. I'm trying to make that ruby run. We're trying to get that done. I don't think it will be done by the convention, but by at least by the end of next year we can make that happen for sure, and that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, Blake, and the other thing with Primerica that's so unique from all these other companies is it's like you said. You have something here you actually can get excited about every single day because if you work harder and you put in the hours and you get the recruits and you get the business, you can chase. I mean, what other companies out there, what other jobs out there are people chasing $100,000 jumps every year or six months in their company? You know what I mean? You can go out there and work your butt off harder. A bricklayer can go lay 100 bricks or 1,000 bricks. The amount of money is not going to change. But here you can actually go after those goals, and it becomes more of a game of, you know, after a point it's like, yeah, well, you got plenty of money, but it's a game of chasing it. Like, you know, I want to get to the next level of this game. I want to get to the next level. I want to get to 600,000, 700,000, 800,000. And you actually have a place where you can get the payoff and get excited about something because it's an achievable goal and there's no glass ceiling. You know, you're not going to get to some of these companies get to $100,000 a year and then it's like, well, there is no place. No matter how hard you work or whatever title we give you, that's pretty much all the money you're going to get paid, you know. So that's another uniqueness about the company. Mike, jump in with your final word. I'll see if Larry wants to give a final word, and then, Blake, you give your final word and we'll wrap this thing up. Well, again, thank you all very much for allowing me to speak. It's always a pleasure being able to walk on with my man and do these trainings and just, you know, be a part of the success that all the Blake's group is having. So, again, thank you all very much. We're excited about finishing December strong and starting 2024 the way we need to. So great job, Blake, and thanks again, Adam, Larry, and the entire group. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Mike. Great job. Final word, Blake. No, absolutely. I'll piggyback off of that, man. It's just enjoyable to be on here. You know, sometimes when you're going through your daily schedule and, you know, you forget about just the joys of being on these calls with great people. They'll talk and share not only your story, but what you've done to succeed. And so I just appreciate you all having me on, and I'm excited about going to the next level with you guys and going to do these, just to have a relationship that we've built over the years. What a great company we're in. I hope everybody has a great holiday season, but the most important thing that we can do is we go get after it for our families. We go get after it, and we do some amazing, amazing things to end this year strong, which I know we will. All right, fellas, thanks so much for being on today. Great job. And, again, the replay number for this call, anybody wants to jump on and listen to it later is 667-771-7907, and the PIN is 982755. Thanks so much, everybody. Have a great rest of your week, and we'll talk to you soon. Go, go, go. Great. Great job, Blake. Great job, Mike. Really enjoy hearing from you guys. Fantastic. Keep the energy rolling through the holidays. Thank you. Yeah. We will, Larry. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. If you get a chance, give me a call later today. I want to ask you something. All right? Absolutely. Yes, sir. Will, for sure. Appreciate it. All right. Here you go. All right, folks. Let's do it big. Go, go, go. Yes, sir. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Go, go, go.