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I want to visit with you today about building a big bay shop and running it as a bay shop factory. I lived in North Carolina in my youth for a short time and I went up to a place called the Broy Hill Furniture Factory. Some of you probably have the Broy Hill furniture in your homes. It's uh kind of nice, at least at that time it was high-end, nice furniture, and it was in an area where I was working, and I just wanted to go see this factory. It was a huge factory, and it was amazing to me as I watched it operate. I went from big section to big section of this factory, and as we stepped out back, I saw that there was a train track that would come and bring this raw material in. It would bring lumber and cloth and different types of furniture, and it would drop it off into a big room and a giant warehouse, and then it was separated from that warehouse out into other sections of the factory. Part of the factory focused on hutches, for example, a dining room hutch and dining room tables. And there was another one that focused on sofas and lounge chairs and different things. And this place was just buzzing with activity, lots and lots of employees, and they walked us through from start to finish where you would see the raw material unloaded, and then you'd see it go through these processing areas, and then you'd see the finished product come out and be packaged for shipment, where that same train could drop the raw material off on one end and it could pick up finished product and take it away on the other end of this factory. Later, when I got into this industry, I thought about my base shop as a factory. The raw material, and some of our former leaders used to talk a little bit about how we need to bring in the right raw material and make sure that that material is separated and processed properly and that we end up producing a finished product. As you think about your base shop, I hope you'll think of it as a factory where you bring in this precious raw material, meaning human beings, these people that come and join our business, and you help them process through your factory, and the finished product is an SMD. And I remind you that the purpose of a base shop, and this needs to dominate your thinking, the base shop is to build frontline leaders. A base shop is to attract and train and retain and build leaders. And we could spend probably an hour on each one of those topics. How do you attract them? How do you bring them into the factory? How do you train them? What do you do while they're inside that factory to get them trained properly and effectively? What do you do to retain them? How do you make sure that you get them off to a fast start so that you retain them? And then how do you build them? How do you help them become successful? A base shop is to attract, train, retain, and build first generation SMDs to you. Help them come out as a finished product that is an independent. I know you've heard this before, but as a reminder, that our goal is to build independent, self-supportive, self-sustaining, self-motivating, self-replicating, self-financing leaders outside of our base shop. That's the finished product. The finished product is an independent, self-supportive, self-sustaining, self-motivating, self-replicating, self-financing business leader who spins away from you outside of your base shop and that will stick in the business and be retained long term and become successful. And of course, hopefully they'll repeat the process where they then run a factory. They watched what you did in running your factory, and they build a factory, and then you build second generations and third generations and on through your team. But if it's not happening with you personally in building your base shop, then you can't expect it to happen with others. I hope you'll just think about that a lot. My job is to build a big base shop and to run it as a factory where we bring in raw material and we produce a finished product. I remind you that there's only one place on earth that frontline leaders come from inside of a base shop, and that's your personal frontline activity. You personally recruiting, you personally building, you personally doing what you need to do to build your base shop. And I remind you that there's only one place on earth that first generation SMDs come from, and that is from your base shop. Through the ones you personally attract and train and retain, and then from the exchanges that come from your base shop. And I hope that you'll stay focused on that. I hope you'll build a big base shop. I hope you'll understand that that's the key to you building long-term width, long-term stability, long-term cash flow, and great wealth in your business. I also remind you, in thinking about a bay shop, that there's a concept of generational creep that happens if you don't build a bay shop. Eventually your business generationally creeps away from you, meaning that what was frontline in your Bay Shop is eventually first generation and eventually second generation. If you don't build a big bay shop, then your first generations probably won't build a big bay shop. And eventually all your production has moved from your base into your first generations, and eventually from your first generation to your second generation, and then on down to where eventually you may have a big team, but it has generationally creeped away from you. And so the profitability of your business goes down as it creeps away from you. And so building and maintaining a big base shop and helping your first generations build and maintain big bay shops will keep the profitability where you want it to be inside of your base. So let's build big bay shops. Let's, through those base shops, build first generations, that finished product. And through that process, you can become one of the great leaders in our business and generate the cash flow and the dreams that you desire. I want to mention a couple other things about leadership today. Leadership is everything and then a thousand times more than that. I heard that when I first got into the industry. One of the leaders of a former company I was with made that comment often. Leadership is everything and then a thousand times more than that. And I've come to believe that. You show me anything that's successful, and there's leaders that caused it to be successful. Show me any family, any business, any organization, any cause out there, and we're certainly involved in one of the greatest causes that exists on earth. But you show me something that's successful, and I'll show you a bunch of leaders at work. And so I challenge you to step up your leadership responsibilities, step up to those responsibilities and be a leader. And a couple things I want to share with you about leadership. One is the way you identify a leader, if you were just watching people, the way you identify a leader, first you look at what they personally do. Are they doing it first? And then, number two, are they getting others to do it? Are they inspiring and getting others to do it? Because you're not a leader if you're not doing it first, and you're not a leader if you're not able to inspire others to do it. We have too many people in our company, and too many people generally in the world that are doing it first, but they're unable to get others to do it. Or we've got too many that are trying to get others to do it that don't do it first, that are not leading by example. And so both of those are critical in leadership. You must do it first, and then you must inspire others to do it. And if you're not doing both of those, then you're not a leader. Keep that in mind in your leadership responsibility. I also want to mention that what it takes to inspire others from a leadership perspective, there's two things that inspire others. One is what they see, and two is what they hear. And so from a leadership standpoint, we need to make sure that everyone within our stewardship, that what they see inspires them, and what they hear inspires them. So what they see you and I doing, and then what they hear us saying, both of those need to be consistent, and both of those need to be clear, and it needs to be inspirational. That will cause people to run through a brick wall, it'll cause people to be loyal, it'll cause them to work harder, it'll help them be more successful. So keep those couple things in mind. How you identify a leader, it's that they must do it first, and they must get others to do it. Those two things. And then how does a leader inspire people? It's what they see and what they hear. So keep that in mind and let's step it up, and we'll see you soon. Well, hello, WFG. This is Monty Holm. I'm excited to be with you today and to be able to share a message with you. I've been in this industry for 34 years, and I've experienced a good share of success, maybe more than most, and I am very excited about sharing with you a message that I hope can help you have success. I feel compelled as we begin here to give you a bunch of never before's. Never before, at least from my perspective, have I seen so much support from the company for its builders and leaders. It's just incredible what you have today. I was thinking a little bit about my career and Rich Thalley and Ed Milette and Jack Linder and Swan and so many of us. When we began, we didn't have what you have today, and yet we still succeeded. And it's proof to me that people can succeed with much less than what you have today. And I know that people can still fail even with all that we have today, and it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that we do what it takes to be successful. And my hope is that my message can help you do that. Just again, never before have I seen so much support from the company. Never before have I seen such great products and concepts for the consumer. You can take confidence in knowing that what we're doing is good and right for people. Never before have I seen such incredible comp models and incentives put in the right places to reward you for doing the right things. Never before have I seen better promotion guidelines or contests or awards and rewards. It's just incredible what you've got your hands on today. From what I see, never before have I felt a stronger desire to do things big and to do them right by our field leaders, meaning persistency and compliance matters and a commitment to do things the way they should be done. Never before have I seen so many leaders sticking their heads up and deciding to be major players on the big stage of life and on the big stage of WFGE. And if you're one of these leaders that's really sticking your head up and working hard and doing the right things, then I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart and want you to know that I'm grateful to be in business with you and to consider you my teammate. And I know what you're going through, I know what it feels like to begin a business, I know what it's like to build it, and I know what it's like to experience great success. And I know many of you are experiencing tremendous success right now. For those of you who are not quite where you want to be yet, I hope my message can inspire a desire in you to do some fine-tuning and to make a few adjustments that might help you in moving your business, and that you can join these others that are surging right now and do the same things that they're doing. Some of you, I know, are deeply frustrated. And I know that you don't feel like you're just nailing it. You don't feel like you're where you want to be, or maybe where you thought you'd be by now. It's just amazing to me that this is one of the few places in the entire business world where you can be, as many of you are, earning a big six-figure income and yet still feel small and insignificant in business. I was in Europe a few weeks ago with a bunch of our leaders, and I had many meetings, many meals, and different times with key leaders in the company, and I'm talking about players in our firm that are making major income, some of them seven-figure earners per year, and yet they were expressing to me that they're just not where they want to be. Sometimes you come back from these meetings or these inspirational events in our lives, and we want to go and overhaul our whole lives. And I want you to know that in most cases it's just fine tuning, these are minor adjustments that are needed. Often it's the seemingly little things that we do or that we don't do that make the big difference in winning or losing. And maybe something today that's said can inspire you to just do some of that fine tuning. And it's my hope that you can and that you will, and that you'll use these things to be successful and that you'll attain the highest levels of success. I know that you can. Uh, if you were to write down the word can and then the word will on two sides of a paper, maybe make two columns, under the word can, I'd have you put I know you can, and then over under the word will, I hope you will. I wish I knew that you will, but I do know that you can. I know that if I can be successful, you can be successful. And I know that if you're willing to do the things that most of the key leaders have done, then you can be successful. The big question is, will you do what it takes? Will you make the commitment? Will you work hard? Will you do these things we discussed today? Now, the main focus of my message today is pre-planning. In talking to the leaders of the company with Joe and others, we felt that pre-planning was a good topic that is necessary and needed, and I know many struggle with it. If you ask most leaders about their strengths, they would probably tell you that they'd give you many of their strengths attitude and work ethic and excitement. But if you ask those same leaders about their weaknesses, I think many of them would indicate a struggle with planning or pre-planning. Too many people struggle with planning their goals, planning their time, planning their focus, planning their appointments, and figuring out the number of appointments that are required to generate a desired number of sales, which leads to a pre-planned income. Or maybe some struggle with planning the number of SMDs that you want to produce this year and have it broken down to the number of base shop recruits and licenses that are necessary to produce those SMDs out of your base shop. And too many people just struggle with this pre-planning idea. I want you to know that I believe from the bottom of my heart and from the success that I've enjoyed through my life, that all success in any endeavor begins in the pre-planning stages. And pre-planning is critical, it's just everything. We've all heard since we were probably children that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. My hope is that you'll understand that you must plan to plan, and you must plan so that you don't fail. We've all heard that American families spend more time planning their vacation each year than they do planning their future. That's sad to me to think about that. I mean, to think that families huddle over calendars and huddle over plans, thinking about some fun they're gonna have, and yet they don't huddle over goals and planning regarding their income and regarding their career and making choices that will lead them to higher levels of success. They don't plan their savings and their retirement and their college education, and they're just not serious enough about it. And they don't drive themselves to go pre-plan the necessary steps to attain the income levels that they need and to plan the desired outcome. I love to plan things with a predetermined outcome, a very specific predetermined outcome. I may not be an expert at this, but I've gotten good at it over the years. And I may not be good at a lot of things, but I've gotten good at pre-planning, and I challenge you to get good at it. Most people, and I want you to think about this, most people deep down in their psyche, if you were to do some psychoanalysis, and I don't know how to do that, but if you were able to do it, I think you'd find that most people, deep down in their psyche, they expect to fail, but they hope to surprise themselves and win. In other words, they expect not to succeed. And any success would be a surprise to them because they haven't planned and prepared themselves. But I want you to know that I believe success to those who achieve it, it is no surprise because they plan to win and they prepare themselves to succeed in everything they do. And they understand that preparation and pre-planning is key to it. I wish I could somehow get every leader in this company, every human being within the sound of my voice and beyond, to become serious about pre-planning, to become serious about making sure that they don't go to bed at night without planning the next day, pre-planning the next day, to make sure that they're very specific. I personally won't go to bed at night. I just can't go to bed at night without reviewing my day and pre-planning my next day. Sometimes at our home over the years, it's been interesting. We had some guests at our home, and it was getting around 10 o'clock at night, and everybody was still visiting, and I stood up and said, Hey, I've got some things I've got to do, and so I'll see you in the morning. And I started walking out of the room, and I overheard my wife say to him, Monty's got to go pre-plan tomorrow. He doesn't go to bed at night without pre-planning his next day. And that's true. I am fanatical. I've been fanatical for 34 years at pre-planning my next day. I just can't even sleep without knowing that I have a specific plan for the next day. I like to measure how today went and compare it with the plans for today. I like to hold myself accountable for today and identify and quantify each day and specifically know how it went and compare how it went again with the plans for that day. But then, more importantly, or as importantly, I have to review my goals for the next day. I gotta tweak my plan and make sure that tomorrow is organized in detail and make sure that it's very specific. And I hope you hear this loud and clear, too, that too many people treat time as though it's a renewable resource and they don't plan it effectively. I know, and you know, that when a day is gone, it is gone forever, leaving in its place something that we traded for that day. Life is simply a whole bunch of days linked together. Each one of them is very critical and very important. Every day counts. I know you've heard this too, that life will come out the way today went. And if that's true, and I believe it is true, since life is a whole bunch of days linked together, generally life's gonna come out the way today went. I need to plan it well, I need to organize it well, I need to have my vision and my goals specific. I gotta know what I'm gonna do to move my business forward and my life. And by the way, I don't think we ought to plan just our business. I think you ought to plan your spiritual life, I think you ought to plan your family life, I think you ought to plan your business life, certainly, and then I think you ought to plan uh health and recreation type things too. But I won't go to bed without reviewing my plans. I just can't and I won't each day. Likewise, I just can't begin a new month without pre-planning that month. You know, days lead to weeks, which lead to months, and I love the fact that I can pre-plan a month and specifically organize it. And but that means I've got to put together possibility projections of what I'm gonna do, my base shop goals, my first generation goals. Pre-planning it out means that I know what I'm aiming at. I have clarity of aim. I can be very specific as to what I want my base shop to do in both recruiting and points. I can be very specific as to what I want my first generations to do. And I spent my life for many, many years, maybe 15 or 18 years without a month going by without doing a possibility projection and knowing exactly what I'm aiming at that month and pre-planning it. To pre-plan my first Tuesday meeting on the first Tuesday of each month. For many, many years, we would have a big meeting, a big kickoff meeting for that month, where we'd call everybody together in the local area and then patch in those in outlying areas. And again, we would focus on clarity of our goals and clarity of our planning and make sure that everybody knew in leadership. You must know what you're aimed at, but you also have a responsibility to make sure that everybody within your stewardship knows the goal and their role in it. In fact, you're not a leader, in my opinion, if you don't have a specific goal, and you're also not a leader if you don't make sure that everybody within your team knows the goal and their role in it. And so, pre-planning all that out takes a little bit of time and you've got to get organized with it. But it will do so much to inspire you and inspire your family and inspire your team to go do bigger, better things. And so uh pre-planning each month. Additionally, I refuse to allow a new year to come in without pre-planning that year. For over 30 years now, I have spent New Year's Eve, and I know you some of you may think I need a little therapy, but I don't. I promise you, it's been just the best thing I've ever done from a standpoint of knowing what my aim is. I've spent New Year's Eve pre planning and putting the final touches on my pre plans for that year. Now, that doesn't mean I don't go celebrate on uh New Year's Eve. I'll just spend several hours that day, many hours that day, tweaking and reviewing and finalizing. And I like to spend weeks prior to that comparing my Goals for last year and preparing what I kind of want to do the new year. But on New Year's Eve, on that day, I rewrite it, I rework my plan, I review it, I read it out loud with energy and excitement and intensity and make sure that I am very well organized before I go out and party that night. And when I say party, my parties aren't too much of a party. We celebrate the bringing in of the new year. But I just love to pre-plan it out. I wake up New Year's morning. It's just exciting for me to think about a new year, to think about the plans for that new year. And again, that's the same with each month and each day, too, but to have them planned out for the year. It gives me energy and excitement. I have here with me in the studios, I'm doing this planning, I have a two-inch thick folder that has 33 folders in it of every set of pre-plans that I've set for my entire life, at least over 30 years, 33 years. These are very precious to me. I've shown them to just a few people. Many of these years just have one set of goals for the year here, but I wish I could show them to you. It's just a precious thing to me. They're all handwritten and the pages are tattered and crumpled up, and obviously they've had a lot of wear and tear because every day for all those years I read those goals out loud for most of those years. It's just changed my life. And I got to be an architect of the changes that I wanted. And you too, each one of us, can be either an architect of the changes, an architect of the new year, or we can be a victim of the changes around us, a victim of the circumstances. You and I get to be the architect of these incredible plans, or we are the victim of the lack thereof. And so I want to be an architect, not a victim. I want to be one who pre-plans and organizes, and I want to be successful. And I was thinking this morning a little bit about how almost everything you see in your entire life, just in the course of your life, almost everything you see was built three times. It was first envisioned in somebody's mind and pre-planned in their mind. Then it was pre-planned on paper, meaning the formal plans for it. And then it was built in reality, meaning that those plans were executed and the plans were turned into reality. Every car you see, every home, every resort, every boat, every yacht, every mansion, every building you'll see, large or small, every business is an example of somebody's pre-planning. Somebody thought it up, somebody then put some plans to it, and then somebody went and executed those plans. That's just how it goes. That's how it went. So you and I, each one of us, we need to do that. We need to make sure we plan things out. It's just amazing how many people over the years that I've worked with that it seems like they just sort of manby pamby along and hope that if they just show up in the mornings and hope that if they hang around the right people and hope if they attend a few meetings that something will change and they'll end up becoming successful. And yet they don't take the time to pre-plan those things with specificity. And so I hope you'll do that. I hope all of us, even those of you that are successful at high levels that are listening to this, I hope you'll maybe, you know, take some bits and pieces of what I'm explaining to you and maybe reassess and ask yourself, how am I doing? Number one, how am I personally doing on my pre-planning? And then number two, how am I doing in teaching the pre-planning principles to my teammates? I want to repeat what I said earlier that all success begins in the pre-planning stages. I want you to know that the founders and leaders of this company planned to succeed and pre-planned to succeed in everything we did in the early stages. You can't just expect to be successful without planning it out and without being specific in what you want to do. Now, I would also tell you that your pre-planning should be all and everything about being on task, on purpose. You know, you might pre-plan things that are not effective or not productive. So your plans need to be all and everything about you staying on the things that are most important, the things that are that make a big difference in your life, the things that you know that are changing, that are life-changing for you and your team, not the things that are insignificant. If you're just pre-planning your administration and pre-planning the little things you're gonna do, that won't make a big difference. You need to pre-plan the meetings, pre-plan the uh interviews you're gonna have, pre-plan your corporate overviews, and pre-plan your business format schools, and again, pre-plan your goals and those kind of things. Years ago, I was in Atlanta and I was visiting with a man named Bo Adams, who I admired a great deal, and was just spending a little bit of time with him. I was actually at his home one night and I was asking him about his success, and he was telling me a little bit about his story, and he began to talk about delegation, the art of delegation, the ability to delegate the things that are less important so that you can focus on the things that are more important. And he made a comment to me that was interesting. He said, I can be around somebody for 10 or 15 minutes and watch them work, and I can tell you whether or not they're going to be highly successful. And I said, Bo, what what are you talking about? I mean, what do you look for in that? And he said, the number one thing I would look for is does this person delegate the things that are less important? Even things that are precious to them, do they delegate things that are precious and important to them for things that are more important, the life-changing things that will help move their business and their life forward? I asked him, well, give me an example of that. And he said, Well, just for example, if somebody pays the bills, you show me a leader that spends a lot of time paying their bills, there's probably nothing more precious to them than the revenue, than the business, you know, the income they're making. But he said, if you're spending a lot of time paying your bills and hovering over those things and dealing with that stuff, that's just an example to me, or an indicator to me, he said, of somebody not willing to delegate. He said, if you're willing to delegate even those things and make sure you've got systems in place to make sure they're done right, but you need to delegate the things that are less important so that you're out there building a team, so that you're focused on other people's lives and attracting and training and retaining leaders in your business. And that little conversation with Bo changed my life. It caused me to want to be a better delegator, to make sure that I'm delegating those things that I don't need to be spending my personal time on. I don't know if I've paid a bill since that meeting with Bo. My bills have been paid, I promise, all of them. But I don't think I've spent much time, if any, hovering over bills. I've trusted others to do that. So for a long time it was my wife. Today it's other staff members that do those things for me. So I want to stay focused on the things that make a difference, the things that I can affect to move my business forward in my life, again, not just my business, but my entire life. One of the things when you're doing pre-planning, I hope you'll think about, is you ought to ask yourself, is what I'm pre-planning right now and what I'm doing right now, is it what Swan Wynne did when he was my size, or what Penny Oy was, or Rich Thalley, or Ed Milette, or any other key leader? Right now we've got so many leaders sticking their heads up in the business, but you ought to be asking yourself, is what I'm doing what they did when they were my size? Because if you're not doing what they did when they were your size, then you can't expect to become what they are today. I think you ought to not worry too much about what those leaders are doing today. I think you ought to worry about what they were doing when they were your size to get to where they're at today. And then one day you too can do the things they're doing and you can be successful. But again, focusing on what they did then, and that's just a good thing to measure yourself against. I think you'll be inspired to know as you think about, even if you don't know exactly what Swan did or what Rich did or these other leaders when they were your size, you ought to ask yourself constantly, I wonder if this is what I ought to be doing, and you'll be inspired as to the little changes and the things you need to do. Now, some important reminders regarding pre-planning. I remind you that you don't have to sacrifice things that are most important in your spiritual life, your family, or your health to succeed at the highest levels in business. And I challenge you and encourage you not to sacrifice those things. You can still attain the highest levels of success in business and still maintain a wonderful life in your spiritual or family or health life. And so you don't have to sacrifice those things. So when you're pre-planning, build in time for those things, and it'll help you be more balanced and it'll actually bring more peace and serenity into your life. I also remind you that what dominates your thinking is what dominates the outcome of your life. If you were to do a self-assessment periodically and ask yourself, what is it that's dominating my thinking right now? Just generally, for the last 30 days, what dominated my thinking? Or for the last week, or yesterday, what dominated my thinking? Were those dominant thoughts aimed in the right direction? Are they thoughts that will lead me to success? Napoleon Hill, that great author that I love so much, the author of the book Think and Grow Rich, he said that that which we persist in placing in our minds will eventually seek reality in our lives. And so we better be careful what we persist in placing in our minds, and we better make sure that what's dominating our minds, what's dominating our thinking, is things that will help us become successful. I remind you also that there's only one place on planet Earth that frontline leaders come from, and that's from your personal recruiting and your base shop. So you need to plan that accordingly. As you're doing your pre-planning, you need to remember that with frontline, personal frontline width, is key to you attaining the levels that these big leaders in the company have attained. And you must pre-plan that, and it needs to dominate your thinking. The business thinking needs to be surrounding width, always and forever. It shocks me so often that, in fact, I was uh visiting with some leaders up in uh, well, I won't say where, but I was visiting with some leaders the other day, and they were telling me, well, no, my business is doing pretty good. I'm just focusing on growing my business, my first through sixth, and I want to be an example, but I'm not really focused on a base shop right now, and I'm not really worried about building frontline SMDs. It just shocked me that this leader was saying this in front of a few other leaders that he works with. And so I hope that what's dominating your thinking and what you're persisting in placing in your mind is personal width, frontline width. Throughout my career, I had a goal, a big goal, to have a hundred frontline to me, 40 in my base at least, frontline width, and 60 frontline SMDs. Before I took the role years ago as a consultant to the firm, and now today I consult with WFG and I consult with field leaders, and my goal is to help you do some of the things that I've done throughout my career, but I was able to attain that. I actually uh created an award in my business where I was a centipede award. Anybody that got a hundred wide, I would give them this little centipede award. And once I had a giant stuffed centipede that was about 20 feet long, I had it created, paid somebody a bunch of money to create that. I handed it out at a giant business format school. I wanted to make sure my team saw the image of a hundred frontline width. And I challenge you to not settle for less than personal frontline width, and don't settle for less than letting that dominate your thinking. Administration shouldn't dominate your thinking. Other things shouldn't. Just frontline personal width in your Bay Shop and through your first generations. That will set you up to do nicely throughout your life. I promise, I promise, I promise. Now, I also remind you that there's a lot of moving parts when you're pre-planning your business. There's a lot of things that'll distract you, and there's a lot of moving parts in our business. It's almost as if you've got to run many businesses simultaneously here. For example, you've got to be the planner, the pre-planner, an architect of your business. You've got to be a teacher and a coach to others. You've got to be a leader, an exemplar that's doing it first, that's leading again in your personal and your base shop. You've got to almost be like a headhunter business. You've got to run an event business. Even your little meetings need to be an event. Your corporate overviews or your BPMs, those need to be like an event. Your big events need to be major events that inspire people to want to stick their heads up and do bigger and better things. You've got to run a, you know, your awards and promotion type things. They've got to be almost like a business unto themselves. You've got to run a compliance business, a compliance department. You've got to run an administration department, a licensing department. I mean, there's a lot of things that you're going to have to do that are going to distract potentially from that main dominant thinking that you should have. And you're going to have to deal with those things, and sometimes they get a little messy. I remind you that business is sometimes messy. But in the messiness of it, you can be successful. Years ago, I heard the statement that the cleanliness of theory is no match for the messiness of reality. In other words, theory is often clean, reality is often messy. When you're going through your business, don't get too worried if it gets a little messy sometimes. You know, explosions are messy. You can't have a nice, clean little explosion. An explosion is going to be a little messy. And when you're growing and surging, you're going to have to deal with some of that. But you make sure that your dominant thinking and your dominant focus is on the right things and not these other things that you can delegate, but you have a responsibility to make sure they're still being done. I mean, you've got a responsibility to make sure that your business is being administered. You've got a responsibility to make sure that licensing and compliance and all those things are being done. And so pre-plan all that and delegate some of it and make sure that you're focused on building your frontline width. I want to tell you a story, one that I haven't shared much in preparing to close my message with you. I haven't shared this much because I kind of held this close to my vest over the years. I want you to know that in the early days, when I was the size many of you are today, when I was a new up-and-coming leader in the business, I wanted to win so bad. And I went to a meeting and heard somebody talk about goal setting and challenged me to read Think and Grow Rich, which I did. And I read it and read it and read it. And my goal was at one time to memorize that book, and it did change my life, and I implemented those things very specifically with exactness. My goal was to implement it with exactness, and I still do much of that today. In those early days, I wanted to win, I wanted to do what's right, I wanted to be successful, but I was often intimidated when I'd go to the meetings. In fact, if I'm real honest with you, I remember some early meetings when I was fairly new, even in my first year or two, I would go and I'd hear these incredible speakers like Rich Thalley. Rich has always been one of my great friends and heroes, and there were others like him that what I would consider in those days the world's greatest communicators, just incredible in their speaking ability. It was intimidating to me. Today you might feel that way about Rich, or you might feel that way about Ed Milette or Swan or other leaders that are such great communicators. I think those leaders, the leaders we have in our company, are probably the best, not only in our industry, but probably the greatest speakers and communicators in any industry, any company in any industry. And my admiration and my appreciation for them is profound. I can't even express to you how much I admire and appreciate them. But I would go and listen to those leaders in the early days, and I would be intimidated. I would come home after those meetings and I would say to myself, and I'd even tell my wife, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can do that. I can't speak like rich. I can't maybe be that incredible communicator. And I was just very intimidated. After a bunch of pre-planning one day and thinking about my business, it just hit me like a ton of bricks that I don't have to try to be somebody else. I don't even have to try to be like somebody else. Now, don't get me wrong, I wanted to make sure that my communication skills, my ability to give talks and those things would improve, and I worked feverishly to make sure that I did improve in those areas. But I finally decided one day that you know what? I'm okay with taking my talents and my abilities and working on them, but I'm okay being who I am. For maybe two or three years, I had a goal to have people say after one of my meetings, I was wishing they'd say, Man, he gives great talks. Man, he's incredible. He just does an awesome job in his speaking and communication. I finally decided one day that I don't need to do that. I don't need to try to impress people. In fact, my goal changed from wanting them to say good things about my speech to where I finally decided that my new goal was to have them say behind my back, and it was okay if they said it in front of me, but my goal became that I want them to be whispering behind my back or in their car on their way home after a meeting, or maybe later when they're telling their spouse or other teammates about it, that I want them to say this. Hey, you know what? I don't think in my entire life, in my whole life, I don't think I've ever met anybody that believes in what he's doing more than Monty Holm. I don't think anybody believes more than him. And so my goal wasn't to impress him with my speech anymore. My goal was to impress him with my belief in what I'm doing, with my sincerity and my absolute profound belief in our concepts and our cause and those kind of things. And I learned early through that process that people don't have to believe what you're saying, but they absolutely need to believe that you believe what you're saying and they will follow you. I know that I can improve and grow, and my ability to speak, and yours will too, it will improve through the process of you doing it. And you can become more like these incredible speakers, these incredible leaders. But in the meantime, you just make sure that you believe in what we're doing. You just make sure that you do things that will help you believe and make sure that others around you know how much you believe. You can't control whether or not they believe what you're saying, but you can absolutely control whether or not they believe that you believe. Make sure that you, in your pre-planning, that you work on those things, that you work on your personal development and your personal belief level. Throughout my years, my earnest efforts, my sincerity, it has paid off for me, and I know it will for you. And our family has been rewarded in such an incredible way as a result of just continuing to work at it, continuing to go through these things, and making sure that my pre-planning and my process is there. Now, last thing, always remember, forever remember, that the key leaders, the biggest leaders in our company, plan to succeed and prepared for it. From the founders of our company to every key leader you'll see that's successful today, they plan to succeed and they prepare to succeed. They didn't just luck their way there. Regardless of what you think, some of them just lucked their way into some good recruit or lucked their way into something. They planned for it and they prepared for it. And then you get more lucky. I hope you'll write that down. You will become more lucky as you work hard to plan and prepare for success. And I remind you that life is worth living, people are worth loving and helping, goals are worth achieving, and winning at the highest level is worth winning. And I remind you that success when achieved with honor is one of the few things that is worth more than its price. And just think about that. Success when achieved with honor, and I hope you will achieve it, and I hope you'll do it with honor, that when it's achieved with honor, it's one of those few things that is worth more than its price. And there is a price there, but the success is worth much more than its price, and it's better than it seems like it would be. And so I wish you the greatest of success. Let's go to work in our pre planning. Let's make sure we see it in our mind's eye. Let's make sure we write it down on paper, and then let's go execute those plans. And so, happy pre planning. Look forward to seeing you soon.