HL January 8,13

In order to be successful in the new year, it is important to unlearn old beliefs and adopt new ones. Many of the beliefs we hold are limiting and prevent us from achieving our goals. Personal development is crucial in changing our thinking and overcoming fears and doubts. Our beliefs have a huge impact on our actions and ultimately our results. Training and developing ourselves and others is key in increasing belief levels and achieving success. Stepping out of our comfort zones and embracing discomfort is necessary for growth. Our model of the world, shaped by our beliefs, determines our actions and outcomes. It is important to shed old beliefs and adopt new ones that empower us. Believing that we can achieve what others have achieved is crucial in taking action and achieving success. Hey, good day, everybody. Hey, it's the beginning of 2013. I want to just talk to you about escaping from the past before you step into the new year. I know it's already started, but before you sit down and you finish writing out all your plan to make the next year fantastic, take a few minutes or maybe even longer. If you're serious about your goals and decide what you need to unlearn, because there's a lot of things that you've learned that you need to unlearn if you want to be successful. Unfortunately, unless you were fortunate to be raised or reared in a super successful family where people were very, very aware and enlightened regarding success and success principles and taught you those things, which there's not very many people that are fortunate enough to be in that situation, you've got to unlearn a lot of things that you've heard over the years from different people, from teachers, from relatives, et cetera. Over the course of your life, you've been infected by some beliefs that you now hold as truths. You've learned to take some actions based on those beliefs and to avoid other actions, some of which would have helped you to produce much, much better results than you currently have. And I won't lie to you, this isn't easy work, but growth only comes from outside your comfort zone. So let's take a big step here, you guys. You're never going to get where you want to go being comfortable. I was saying comfort and success are like oil and water. They don't mix. In the beginning of the trek to becoming super successful, virtually everything you're going to do is going to be uncomfortable. In our business, there's so many things that made me really uncomfortable, especially public speaking, prospecting, all the things that you have to do to be successful here, for the most part, are really uncomfortable for the majority of people. And there's some people that don't care, they don't feel that way, but they're very, very rare, those people that don't care. Most of us, we have a lot of fears, a lot of doubts, a lot of worries, and so we need to change our thinking to overcome those things, right? Because your thinking are those old, limiting beliefs that you have to escape from, and you have to adopt new ones. That's why personal development's so important. It's so critical because unless you're growing yourself and making yourself more aware all the time, you're going to keep reverting back to those old, limiting beliefs that hold you back from becoming the kind of person and having the kind of success that you really want to have. Like nothing has a greater impact on your results than your model of the world, the way you look at the world. If you look at the world like everybody's out to get me or only the rich get richer, or unless you're born in the right family or on the right side of the tracks, you can't be successful, or you have all these kinds of models of the world that only lucky people succeed. These are all your model of the world, whatever that happens to be, and it has a huge impact on your life because it determines the actions you take, your beliefs determine the actions you take, and one of the things that prevents people from succeeding, especially in our business, is because they have beliefs about themselves and about how, even like, for example, sales. People have a lot of hangups about being in the sales business. They think that in order to be a great salesperson, you have to be a con man or you have to take advantage of people or you have to bamboozle people. They have that feeling about it, or they think they're pushy. So all those things influence your beliefs about it, influence your behavior, because if you have negative beliefs regarding sales and recruiting and all that, then you're never gonna do the things you need to do, because what happens to us is that we only do, we'll only attempt things that we believe we have a reasonable chance at succeeding at, and so this is another reasoning for personal development. The more you grow, the more you develop yourself and develop your skill sets, you're gonna be, your actions are gonna change. You're gonna start doing more because your belief about your ability to get a positive result's gonna improve. As your belief about getting a positive result grows, you're gonna do more. It's just common sense. So that's why I'm always constantly reminding you about personal development, growing, getting better. I talk about that incessantly because I know until you do that, your belief, your self-belief, your belief that you can have good results are gonna be limited, and if your beliefs are limited about what you can do, your actions are gonna be very limited, and so if they're gonna be, if your actions are limited, then you're gonna actually not get results, okay? So it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's why the better you get, the more work you put into growing yourself and developing your skill sets, your belief will grow. As your belief grows, your actions will automatically grow. This is really good for you that are leaders. This is why you should be so focused on training people because one of the reasons, or the main reasons why your people don't do more, why they don't prospect more, why they don't recruit more, why they don't invite more people to meetings, why they don't close more is they don't have a strong belief that they can do it. Well, why? Because they're not trained. They're not really trained at a high level, so their belief is very low. The better trained people are, the greater their belief level. Believe more in themselves and their ability to get results. As a result, they're going to automatically do more, okay? Those of you that are very good at the business, you pay the price to get good, you don't have a problem prospecting. You don't have a problem asking for a check. You don't have a problem inviting people to meetings because you've prepared. Well, those newer people in your business who are not prepared, who haven't been trained well, they have very low levels of belief. As long as their level of belief is low, they're never going to do much. That's why you as a leader should be a fanatic about training people well because it automatically grows people's self-belief. Their self-belief grows, so do their actions, so do their results. It's all sequential. I'm going to tell you something. You learn to take action on those beliefs and to avoid other actions, some of which would help you to produce much, much greater results. So I'm not going to lie to you. This isn't going to be easy work, but growth only comes, again, from being outside of your comfort zone. If you are really serious about becoming successful, you've got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, if you will, okay? I know that sounds kind of funny here, but it really does. You've got to look at being uncomfortable as I'm making progress. I'm moving in the right direction. This is making me really uncomfortable making this phone call. This is making me really uncomfortable going up and talking to this person. It's making me really uncomfortable to call somebody or invite somebody to an op meeting or to a fast start school. But if you're feeling uncomfortable in our business in the beginning, you know you're moving in the right direction. If there's no discomfort, it means you're not doing anything. You're not doing anything that can help you grow your business or become successful. So escape from those old, limited beliefs. You've got to adopt new ones. As I said earlier, nothing has a greater impact on your results than your model of the world, folks. Okay, I just want to say that again. That is affecting everything about your life. That model is built on all those beliefs that you've developed over the years, the rules that you live by. There can be nothing more powerful and there can be nothing so dangerous because those beliefs drive you. I mean, you think of all, when people are doing things that you look at, you know, like some of these fanatics, right, that do things that are crazy, well, they do it because they believe that's the right thing to do. Not because it's right or wrong, but because they believe it. They really believe it. You know, all these Islamic fanatics, they do blow up children and blow up buses and blow up everything and all this stuff. Why do they do that? Because they believe, they really believe that that's the right thing to do. So that belief drives their actions. Even as crazy as that seems, okay, all actions, all of your actions, everything you do or don't do is driven by what you believe. So there's two shockingly difficult questions you have to ask yourself. Which of your long-held beliefs are you willing to shed? Like, things like I'm not a good recruiter, I'm not a good salesperson, I'm not a leader, I'm not very good at training, money's the root of all evil, it's not okay to wanna be rich. I mean, all these things that you have, these beliefs, right, that are limiting you, you need to get rid of them. And you need to think, what new beliefs am I willing to adopt to replace those beliefs? You know, like one of the beliefs I've had, always had, and I think it's served me very well, I've always thought if others can do it, well then so can I. If others have done it, why can't I? So can I. Look, I always thought everything successful people do can be learned. If somebody learned how to be a great salesperson, then I can learn how to be a great salesperson. If somebody learned how to be great at recruiting, then if I'm willing to put the time and effort, I could become great at recruiting. If somebody learned how to close really, really well, close transactions, close recruits, then I can learn how to do that. If somebody else built a huge organization, right, with thousands of people, then I could do that. That's always been a belief of mine. Well, as a result, that belief drove me to action. And then the action created the results, which means, which in my situation, I did all those things. But it all started with my belief that if others could do it, I could do it, and that if everything other successful people learned and can do, I can learn and can do. As long as I have commitment and self-discipline, I could be great too. Why not, okay? And I tell you, it's those little wins. It's thinking like that. Like if you think, oh, he's so good or she's so good, I can never be as good as them, well, then of course you can't be because if you think you could never be as good as them, then you'll never put the effort that they put in to be that good. If you automatically think I could never be that good, then why put in the effort? Why pay a price? Why study? Why listen to the audios? Why read the books? Why go to the seminars? Why come to all the training meetings? Why do it? Why do anything? If you don't believe that you can do a thing, why put forth the effort? This is why beliefs are so critically important because they always, always, always directly influence your behavior, your actions, and your behavior and your actions always, always, always produce your results. So if you don't change your beliefs, right, if you don't start thinking right, you're never gonna be successful at anything you do. Look, you think of all the jobs that you could apply for, right? There's certain jobs, high-income jobs that people don't apply for because they go, I can't do that. Why even bother applying to that job, right? Or why even bother thinking I could become a regional vice president? I can never, you know, I'm not a good salesperson. I'm not good at recruiting. Well, of course, if you think you're not good, but if you have the belief, if you think you're not good, you're not gonna do it, but if you have the belief, hey, you know what? That person learned how to do it. Let me find out what they did. Let me model and mimic that, and if I do exactly what they did, I could learn how to do it as well, right? And I could become successful as well. I might even be better than them. Who knows, right? So what are you willing, you know, what are you willing to adopt to replace those beliefs? You gotta ask yourself those questions. Your beliefs, folks, your people's beliefs. I'm gonna say this again because this is so important. This is the reason that I was able to build the organization I built and to earn the income I've been able to earn. I did it because I believed it could be done, that others did it, and if I just did what they did, I could do it as well, and then as a result, I put forth the action, right, to make that happen. Look, do you believe that you need to wait for permission? Do you believe that the kind of prospecting that you don't like to do doesn't work anymore? I mean, like, what are you, look, most of you who didn't have a great year last year, you didn't prospect anywhere close to as much as you should have prospected. Why do you think you didn't prospect like you should have? Because you have a belief about prospecting that stopped you from doing it. Like, belief could be, I don't wanna come across as being pushy, or it makes me feel uncomfortable. Rejection really hurts, or I could prospect and nobody really wants to do the business anyways. Most people don't wanna do it, or I recruit people and they don't do anything anyways. Why prospect? I mean, you have all kinds of beliefs about this, right, that prevent you from doing it. Like, for me, I knew most people wouldn't do the business. Okay, I was, you know, I had a very good experience, fortunate to have this experience before I got in Prime America, where I was recruiting salespeople and training salespeople in the jewelry business, okay? Nine out of 10 people didn't work out, folks. They just didn't work out because they didn't work, and they didn't do the things we asked them to do, and we had to get rid of them, right? So most of the people didn't work out. So when I got into Prime America, I already knew coming in that the vast majority of people wouldn't work out. Not that they couldn't do it, but they wouldn't do the work. They wouldn't have the self-discipline, they wouldn't have the work ethic, they wouldn't have the persistence to change their beliefs, to overcome their fears, to develop the skillsets that they needed to have success. It's not that they couldn't do it, they just wouldn't do it, right? Like, for those of you, it's not that you can't be an RVP, it's that you won't be an RVP. You won't do what's necessary. When people come in, it's not that they can't succeed, it's that they won't do what's necessary, right? So I never thought there was something wrong with our opportunity, I never saw that. I always thought there was something wrong with the people not wanting to do the work to take advantage of the opportunity, right? So the way I looked at the business is I knew most people wouldn't do it, but I also knew some would, because some of the people in the jury business that I recruited and hired and trained became managers. Okay, so those people did it. Now, not everybody, but some did. So I knew that if I could develop managers there, at some point, if I went through enough numbers and I got really good at training people and I found motivated people, I could help them be successful, and those people that developed the self-belief and the skill sets to start having success, making money, recruiting, selling, that sort of thing, right? Then those people would stay and those people would become RVPs, and of course, some of them have. And so I knew that could happen. I also knew that the vast majority of people wouldn't do it, but I didn't really let that bother me at all. In fact, to me, people quitting, I looked at it like a positive thing, because when I was in the jury business, when I had underperforming people that didn't perform well, that were lazy, that didn't do what we asked them to do, I would have to fire those people, and I hated firing people. It made me so uncomfortable, because I would know weeks in advance that I was gonna fire these people and we'd run ads and I'd start doing tons and tons and tons and tons of interviews to find another person to fill that person. I would have to find another person before I fired the person I was gonna fire. And I would have to be thinking about, oh, I'm gonna have to take this person out, they're gonna be upset, they're gonna cry, they're gonna do whatever. I hated firing people. When I got into Prime America and I asked the guy that recruited me, I said, what happens when people don't perform here in Prime America? He says, what do you mean? I says, do you have to fire them? He goes, no, no, no, you don't have to fire them. These people are independent contractors, you don't fire people, they just go away. They just quit, they stop coming to meetings, they just go away. And I went, really? He says, yeah, they just stop showing up. You mean I don't have to fire them? No, no, you don't have to fire them, they just go away, they just stop showing up. I said, that's, to me, I said, that's awesome. I don't have to fire anybody, they just go away, they just go find another person that's motivated and work with them. He goes, yeah. I said, that is incredible. Oh man, that made me so happy that I didn't have to fire people and they would just quit on their own. See, the thing that you all look at as being a negative thing, my belief that it was super positive. So I just kept on looking for the right people. They quit, see you later, I'd have to worry about them, I didn't think twice about them, I just kept going. See, your thought about it, your belief about it drives your behavior. It affects your attitude. My attitude was if they don't want to work, then they quit, they just leave. Saves me the trouble of having to fire them and going through all the discomfort of having to fire them, they just leave, fantastic. That was awesome. So then all I focused on was prospecting like crazy. Prospecting, prospecting, prospecting, knowing that the vast majority of that prospect weren't gonna work out, not because they couldn't do it, but because they wouldn't just focus on the right people. So I just looked for motivated people. And when I found motivated people, oh my God, I built relations with them, I made them feel like I was the best thing since sliced bread, man. I built relations, I've talked to them, spent time with them, coached them, trained them, right, got them going. Look, do you believe that your competition, you know, our competitors are beating you on price, that there's nothing you can do about it? Of course, that's ridiculous. Price is only an issue in the absence of value. This is one of the reasons why you should do FNAs. Those of you who don't do FNAs, you are, you're nuts. I don't want to say it too strongly, but you are not very bright if you don't do financial needs assessment. You don't do financial needs analysis because it eliminates your competition. By doing an FNA, taking the extra time to really do a plan for people, it eliminates all your competition. By not doing it, you're just like them. Do you believe you're not really big enough to make a difference, that you can't make a difference? Folks, if you were to pay the price to really get great at our business and learn how to do this and learn how to help families and then learn how to train people to help families, you can make a huge difference in people's lives. You don't think that I've made a difference in Rick Susie's life or Chris Howard's life or Gary McCrummon's life or the list goes on and on? You don't think I've made a difference in those people's lives? Did I do the work? Of course I didn't. I would never, ever venture to say I did the work, but folks, I made a difference. You ask Rick. He thanks me all the time. Chris thanks me all the time. Folks, you are big enough to make a difference. Look, we all have self-limiting beliefs. Each and every one of us also believes the lies we tell ourselves because it helps maintain an illusion. Our hallucination, our model of the world, right? We believe those things. Maybe you have parents that told you that you're never gonna amount to anything or whatever. You've had people beat you down or whatever, right? Don't believe that. It's ridiculous. If someone else has done it, you can do it too as long as you're willing to do what they've done. That's the gotcha. People say, what's the gotcha in Prime Miracle? Well, there's a lot of things you have to learn how to do. You gotta be willing to be uncomfortable for a period of time so that at some point in the future, you can get comfortable. Look, I was uncomfortable for a long time, folks, but I'm very comfortable right now. I was willing to be uncomfortable for years so I could be comfortable for the rest of my life. I'm gonna tell you something. It is so worth it to be uncomfortable, and again, I'm gonna just point this out. You gotta look at that discomfort as something that's positive, that it's moving in the right direction, that there's growth. Without discomfort, there can be no growth. It's just part and parcel of growing, but growing also gives you all the things you're wanting to have in your life. Look, I want you to write down some of the long-held beliefs that you have and then write the opposing belief right next to it. All right, like for example, I'm not a good recruiter, and then the opposing belief is I can become a great recruiter if I'm willing to put the time in. Just put the opposing belief over and over, okay? Whatever that happens to be. I'm not a very good leader. I could become a good leader if I study leadership and I do the things that other leaders have done. I could become a great leader. I mean, that's the opposing belief right next to it. So every single belief you have has an opposing. Money's the root of all evil. No, the love of money's the root of all evil, but money is a tool. Money is something good. Money can help other people. In fact, the number one thing that churches do is they're asking people for money every Sunday, right? They're always asking for money. Why are, if it's the root of all evil, why is the church asking for money every week? Why is every charity asking for money if money's evil? Why is the government always wanting to raise taxes to take more of our money if it's so evil? Come on, think about it. You gotta change your belief. Pick a belief that you suspect may no longer be serving you well, right? And then change it. You've gotta escape from those old, limiting actions and adopt new actions, but the only way that you can escape from old, limiting actions and adopt new actions is to change the beliefs because the beliefs drive your actions. Your belief drives your actions. Like if you believed that if you worked like crazy and mastered our seven fundamentals and prospected every single day, all day long, that that would lead to becoming super wealthy, right? And you believed it, you really believed it. Not only you believed so much that you knew it, guess what, you do it all the time. But because you're not sure you have a limited belief about that, you don't do it. Look, a lot of what you're doing is already working for you, right? You're doing a lot of good things. You wanna keep what's working in your repertoire. There's no reason to change that. But if you don't take some new actions, you aren't gonna produce any different result this next year, this 2013 is, and if this is, you're hearing this down the road, it doesn't matter what year it is, right? You're not gonna produce those different results. You just have the same sales year over year, same income ad infinitum. I mean, come on. If your income has been stagnant for the last year or two or three or four, then you've gotta change some things. You gotta change your beliefs, you gotta change your actions. Here are two more tough questions. It's an act of bravery to answer these honestly. It's even more courageous to take action. Which actions are you willing to abandon? And what new actions are you willing to take? So you gotta ask you, what are you willing to abandon? What actions or inactions, right, that you've been doing or not doing are you gonna get rid of, and what new actions are you gonna take to replace those? What actions do you take that no longer serve you? Do you procrastinate? Well, you need to stop doing that. I used to have a procrastination problem, right? Procrastination leads to economic devastation, folks. Are you a dependent, always counting on someone else to do the heavy lifting that you should be doing yourself? What actions, if religiously taken, would propel your sales results to a whole new level? Who do you have to be to take those actions? Look, I wanna ask you a question. Have you done all you can to master the seven fundamentals and teach them? Have you done that? What are those seven fundamentals? This is one of the key elements that I believe, I don't believe, I know, I know every single person who is big in Primerica has mastered these seven fundamentals or they could not have gotten big and they definitely could not have reproduced themselves. Right? So the question again, have you done all you can to master the seven fundamentals and then teach them? Have you done that? What are they? One, number one of the seven fundamentals is prospecting. Have you mastered prospecting? Number two is setting appointments. Have you mastered setting appointments? Because when you prospect somebody, you get a name and a number, you need to call them and set an appointment. Have you mastered presenting? Presenting in a way that leads to sales and recruits, right, the presentation is really a sales and recruit presentation. Have you mastered that? Have you mastered overcoming all the most common objections? Like I wanna think about it, is this a pyramid? I wanna talk to my agent. I'm not much of a sales person. I don't have enough time. All these objections, have you mastered them? Do you know exactly how to respond to them without thinking reflexively? Have you mastered all the products that we have, right? Do you know mutual funds inside and out? Do you know all the retirement accounts? Do you know how our term insurance product works inside and out? All the different term, right? Do you know how our debt product works? Do you know all the things that we have to offer? Do you have those down? Have you mastered recruiting at the kitchen table? When you see that a person has a shortfall, do you know how to recruit them? Do you know how to ask the right questions? Do you know how to do that? And if you recruit somebody, do you know how to get them in the field fast and field train them so that they can be, come really adept at the business? Those are the seven fundamentals. Folks, I don't care who you are, everyone who's big has those down. Everyone. There's not anybody that got big that doesn't know how to do all that or who wasn't great at that. Are you willing to do that? That's the key to your whole business. That's the foundation. Those are the fundamentals. Once you've mastered those, and then you actually work, right? You prospect every day. There's nothing that can stop you from being successful once you've mastered those seven fundamentals. Are you gonna get that overnight? Of course not. You're gonna have to put a lot of time and effort into mastering that. Might take you six months. Might take you a year. Who cares? Once you've got it down, it opens a door for you and opens opportunity for you to make 100,000 a year, 500,000, a million or more a year. You could make big, big money here once you've mastered that and you work, okay? And you prospect. And you sit down and write down your plan. Maybe you've already done this, right? For the next year, first decide which of your existing beliefs no longer serve you and what beliefs might serve you better. Then decide which actions you are gonna routinely take on a daily basis that might be better replaced with some new set of actions. Look, this is the price of change. This is the price of improvement. This is the price you pay to accomplish what you've always wanted to accomplish, to accomplish all your goals and dreams, to provide for you and your family the kind of things that you've been talking about and promise them. Look, there's a price. This is the price. Change your beliefs, change your actions. That's the price, right? That's the ticket, the entrance ticket to where you wanna go in your life, folks. Talk to you next week.