Matt Sapaula | The Closers Podcast #3

Matt Sapaula is a Marine veteran, agency builder, bestselling author, and one of the most decorated leaders in financial services. He was the right-hand man and chief distribution officer to Patrick Bet-David during PHP's nine-figure exit. Today he leads over 5,000 agents and runs the Money Smart movement.

In this episode of The Closers Podcast, host Ajay sits down with Matt to cover the full arc of his journey. From bankruptcy and divorce at 22, to three jobs while building his insurance practice, to cracking 100K per month inside 37 months at PHP. They dig into his recruiting philosophy, how he builds duplication into his leadership model, why he recruits the spouse and the kids not just the candidate, how he thinks about delayed gratification and financial discipline, and what legacy actually means to him after 27 years in the game.

If you are in sales, recruiting, or building any kind of team-based business, this one is loaded with frameworks you can apply immediately.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, guys? I have a special treat for you today. We have one of the most fascinating people I've ever met in a titan of industries, Matt Sapala, who I'm going to be interviewing here in a second. If you don't know Matt, he was the right-hand manned and chief distribution officer for Patrick Bet David on their nine-figure exit of PHP. Not only that, Matt has built an insane following across his own social medias on seven-figure squad on YouTube, multiple hundreds of thousands of people on Instagram, and is again a titan of industries in financial services. We're going to be talking about sales, recruiting, marketing, life, faith, his experience in the military, and so much more. You do not want to miss this episode. I hope you guys enjoy. And hey guys, before we jump into the episode, I want to take a second and just thank you for following along. With this being a newer podcast as the third episode of the Closers Podcast, I want to take a second and just invite you to go ahead and subscribe if you're listening to this on YouTube. Let us know what you think in the comments. It helps us a ton as we try to serve you with the best interviews I can come with. If you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please just leave us five stars. It helps with the algorithm a ton. We've already had hundreds of downloads and tons of comments and great feedback. I'd love for you guys to keep following along on the journey. So thanks for listening. I'll see you on the inside. All right, guys, today we are going to be interviewing somebody that I've been following for years personally and am ecstatic about what we're doing today. Somebody that I hope after today I get to consider a friend of mine, somebody who started his career in the Marines, protecting and serving our country, was deployed twice and uh fell into financial services thereafter, where after a decade on his own, had an awesome partnership with PHP that we're gonna be diving into, a master of sales, recruiting, leadership, and so much more we're gonna get into into this episode. Matt, I cannot believe you are here. Thank you for being here today. There we go. I can't wait for the next one, man. February 12th on my calendar. That's right. Tetra Stock is scheduled to be here. That's gonna be nuts. Yeah. We're gonna get into that towards the end of the butt um I want to go back in time, man. I want to talk about your your early life. Okay. Uh, because you know, I've heard you in a bunch of interviews, read your books, uh, and I know you had uh, what did you call it? Uh, a year of motivation, I think. Is it okay if we start there? My year of tran my year of motivational transformation. Motivational transformation. So for for those that don't know, Matt, you went through uh a marriage. Did you have a kid that year too? Um also went through a divorce and a bankruptcy over one year. One is a multiple year of transformation. Tell us about that year.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

So I think most Marines, most service members get involved in relationships because the combination of them being homesick or they get paid extra money if they're able to get married and leave out town. And so therefore that staying at the barracks get messed with and harassed by, you know, uh the the you know the platoon, platoon sergeants that are on base and their job is just to continue to be harassment in your life, you know, because it's military, right? Right. But getting married kind of gives you an excuse to kind of live out in town or have some extra benefits, extra pay. Yeah. And so it's really not a relationship to have a marriage, it's really a relationship of convenience for a lot of military service members. And and I think the little bit about that played true in my life.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

So I'm coming back from my second deployment, and uh I said, you know what, let's get to get married and let's start a family. I don't know really what that all meant. I really know what it meant having a wife was. But come to find out, you know, it wasn't the best relationship. We really couldn't stand each other. Um, I really met, I mean, I met her at a bar three months before I'm deployed. And so resume for success. Yeah, and and so I mean, I'd write her while I was deployed because this is before phones and Skype, and it was on mid-90s. Mid-90s, yeah. Yeah. And uh kind of like homesick and kind of look forward, looking forward to coming home, you know, that that type of dynamic. But she wasn't the one. And to your to your point, got married, realized she wasn't one, had a kid, divorced, next time a bunch of my credit cards are all charged up. I'm laughing at it now, so it's only 20,000 bucks. But to me, that was my whole year's salary. Wow. 20 grand, my whole year's salary, filed bankruptcy. How old were you at this point? 22, 22. 22. Okay. And uh the Marines would say, This is how you never take advice from broke people, because all the Marines would say, Hey, so Paul, wouldn't you call Susan down the street? She's an attorney, she'll wipe out all your debt. Well, yeah, we're sure like how like what's the problem? She just pay her 500 bucks, she'd take you to court and she wipes out all your debt. I said, That's it? That's it. Not realizing it's called bankruptcy. Easy. She represents me. Yeah, right. No side effects, right? No, those seven-year side effects. Yeah, right. And so at that point, like uh bankruptcy. Next time I'm trying to file for you know, apply for credit cards, whatever. No, you file bankruptcy. What does that mean? Yeah, no mortgages, no cars, no credit cards, nothing. Nothing, nothing. Wow. It was nuts. And the credit cards that would offer me 45% you know APR. Oh my God. You know, they're they're sticking it to us. So uh, but through that process, that's when I really started understanding money, not through being proactive about it, but reactive about it because of pain.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah. Wow. I think there's a lesson in there too, that that, you know, uh, not to disrespect your uh your your fellow jarheads there, but um bad advice can be even more impactful in your life than good advice, right? So you really have to be careful who you're seeking advice from.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Yeah, I mean, my devil dogs, my warfighter, my unit, I'd go to combat with them any day. Of course. When it comes to finances, probably not. But that's a battle that I don't get to bring my buddies in.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

It's a battle we fight at home by ourselves, and I was dealing with it with you know, PTSD, with alcohol, with ways to escape, thinking the doctors, these bills would go away. No, that was a battle. I was not prepared to fight, nor could I invoke, you know, help for my battle buddies.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

It's crazy. So you were you were active duty for eight years, was that? Yep. Okay, and then so when you got out, I remember you were one of the first people to get to use a GI Bill.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

You got into my bio for sure. Yeah, I did. And it was uh DePaul University you started getting into financial literacy and understanding the finance world, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Tell us about that. I took the whole curriculum, the certified financial planning curriculum, modules one, three, four, five, you know, tax planning, investment planning, state planning, insurance planning, you know, everything. Everything I took the whole curriculum, job bills helped me pay for it, and then they changed the law, I think in 02, 03, that you needed a college degree to get your CFP. Oh, yeah. Your CFP designation. Really? I'm not going to college, man. This is about the most college I'll ever go to. Yeah. Yeah, I can barely stand this. Right. And uh, but I I was asking in the whole classes, hey, is anybody here in the CFP class? Is anybody here gonna be running their own business, like writing your own practice? Not one hand went up, and there's about maybe 40, 50 students in there. Everybody's gonna be working for like Tia Creft, everybody working for American Express, everybody worked for a company or institution, right, or a family office. Right. I was the only one in there, black and brown for that kit for that matter, yeah, that was gonna be working for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Wow. And so what actually sparked your interest into that world? Because obviously there's a big shift from uh the mindsets you were carrying into, hey, let's get good at this stuff, right? So, what actually created that decision for you back then? Pain and I got nothing else.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Because you know, I'm I'm coming out the Marines, I'm coming through just pain, and I was like, I gotta get my credit re-established, I gotta start understanding financial literacy. And the irony is I got approached that my last year in the Marines. I'm thinking about re-enlisting. Right? I'm single dad now, re-enlisting another four years takes me to 12, 12, another eight years. I can debt by 20 years, I can be retired by 37 years old.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

And I haven't paycheck, pension check for the rest of my life. Financial security, right? Financial security, yeah. And I'm like, it sounds like a plan, but I gotta figure out if I'm gonna reinlist because my reenlistment really isn't my 12-year mark. It's really this one because this is gonna take me over the hump. And then I ran to a retired master sergeant right out in town at a Best Buy. Yeah. Of all places, he approaches me as I'm taking my boys to the bathroom. Oh boy. He probably, hey, Marine. I'm like, like, dude, not right now, man. Exactly. Like, you talk to the strange dude in the bathroom. How did he know you were a Marine? My haircut. Oh, okay. That's what he said. Hey, are you a Marine? So I can tell by the way you look and the way you walk. Okay, all right. So either you're checking my haircut or are you watching my ass? Yeah. Just check it out. But uh anyway, he he said, Hey, listen, I'm I'm in the money game. I'm retired, I'm a retired master sergeant. If I could show you the ropes, would you listen? I'm like, boom. I thought I saw stock market and money right away because I was at Walls Fargo the other day before. Because I'm doing my paycheck advance. You remember uh back in the day, I can advance $200 check as my next paycheck. Yeah, before you had these paycheck uh cashing states. Yep, yep. So a thousand dollar check would come up. KD Wentworth wasn't as big back then. And that's all with the annuities, right? Yeah, or with uh light policies. But but I'd get a $1,000 deposit, but only $800 would show up because I borrowed $200 from the week before. Yeah, yeah. So and I do that every paycheck. Wow. So hard to get ahead when you're doing that, man. Yeah. And right next to ATM was the stock market chart. And the, you know, if you invest, you know, a dollar in 1929, it'd be X amount of dollars, you know, that that that Ibotson chart. And so as soon as I said the money game, that's exactly the picture that came into my mind. Wow. And so I said, okay, I'm I'm down. Gave me his card. And here, here, here's a here's a tip for your prospecting guys. He gave me his card, but never took my information. Oh, interesting. So, in other words, I'm without me knowing it, I'm controlling the point of contact. Right. He never got my information. He can't reach out to you. So every day, brother, every day I kept his business card in my breast pocket. Meaning, I'm gonna call this guy, I'm gonna call this guy, I'm gonna out the marine. Nah, I thought bankruptcy. I'm gonna call this guy, I'm gonna call this guy. Nah, I don't have no college education. I'm gonna call this guy, I'm gonna call this guy. I know about money. I'm gonna call this guy, I'll call this guy. I don't know anything about sales. Every day I'm talking my way into it and talking my way out of it.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Shaman Gill, man. That's the devil keeping you away from your purpose, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Next thing you know, Sepala, come back to the hangar. You got a call from who? I don't know, some strange looking for you. Okay. Sergeant Sapala speaking, how I'm helping you, sir, I'm hey, is this uh the Marine I met in the bathroom of a best body? Praise the Lord. I've been bro I I'm so glad you called me. I got your card right in your business card right here. No kidding. Hey man, I'm in base housing tonight. I'm visiting some buddies. You mind if I drop by while I'm in the area? Of course. Comes by, shows me the business model, tell me what license I needed to get. It costs two, three, four hundred bucks to get started. Sure. And I'm like, bro, I'm broke as shit, but I got the money.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

You know, I got the money because I was desperate enough. Right. I was desperate enough. And that's and bang, that's probably all I had. Maybe I had maybe two, three hundred bucks left on my bank account. Everything I went here to zero. Wow. And uh I'll remember is taking a bunch of cookies out the out the oven, uh uh getting some rice and some spam after he left. And that was my dinner, and fed my fed my son. He was what one, two years old at the time, and uh started taking my 52-hour pre-licensing course for life insurance. And I had to show up every day in Irvine. Today you can get it on done online, yeah. But I had to show up in Irvine every day. So I took a week's leave, my vacation time, to take that claim. Wow. Yeah. Before I could take the exam.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

That's commitment, man. Yeah, that's what you have to do in California to get your life insurance license. That makes sense. Interesting. So then you started your career in California and well, you were there for what, a decade or so, or how long were you there? Yeah, in the Marines, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

Uh uh physic, well, physically, maybe five years, but paperwork-wise, eight years. Okay. Yeah. Do you miss it? California? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

From what it was, yes. Yeah. Not what it is today. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. So then how did you end up back in Chicago?

SPEAKER_03 11:27

So I got at the Marines and I said, you know what? I don't have a support system. I don't have a natural network. Uh the mentor at the opposite land. Go back to home where you have some support with your family. So go back to I go back to Chicago. Everybody I thought I knew weren't there anymore. Either moved out, dead, or in jail. Perfect. Yeah, just be typical Chicago. So I'm we're just and I'm I I'm literally, brother. I'm calling I'm looking for people. My my yearbook. My 1991 yearbook and a payphone and a payphone and a payphone booth. I take the police phone booth, it's an old school. Payphone booth, pop, pop, pop, match it up to the other. Where are they at? Let me call it. I'm just calling. Hey man, man, I'm back in town. I'm out the Marines. I got involved in financial services. I got insurance. Let's let's grab lunch. Wow. Let's get reacquainted, man. It's been a minute. Only three or four people, the whole yearbook was able to really track down. And I just started building connections and just networking. And my uh my seventh grade teacher gave me a shot. Shout out to Mr. Novak. And he said, Hey, so what are you doing these days? I said, I'm in retirement planning, and hey, I'm about to retire through for five years. You show me what you got. Okay. So we grabbed lunch at Americana in in in Schaumburg and uh we're having lunch. I show him this. I've I showed my my signature five gotchas of money presentation.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Right? Which is now a book today. Yep. And uh I said, this makes sense. Make a long story short, uh, because of the use of index products, insurance products, not that everything is inside insurance, but for the most part, his retirement never lost during the Great Recession. That's awesome. We are able to uh harvest and preserve his home equity when everybody's home equity is dropping in the Great Great Recession. And he was able to not only retire on time, but since everybody's scared about the real estate, he was able to buy his dream home post-retirement because the people are just selling it for whatever they can sell because he had cash and capital liquidity. And that's where now my new book came out, those principles, and now keep the keys.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

We'll talk more about that later in this episode. But that's uh that's really cool. Okay, so you're starting to build your business back up in Chicago now, right? Um, I'm curious, going back to your time in the Marines, uh, what do you feel like you learned during that time? Whether it was from the brotherhood in the community, whether it was from the actual deployments, uh both what the Persian Gulf and wasn't Somalia? Was that yeah, Somalia? Feels like a hot topic. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

So they can come here and create some quarterly learning centers. But I I learned in the Marines some some you know, outside the teamwork, you know, uh spirit of corps hard work. I realized in the Marines, without me knowing it, I was wired for sales. I was wired for entrepreneurship. Tell me more. Every promotion I had was a what they call a meritorious promotion.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Which means clip hanger. Which means that, for example, there's usually promotion just because you've been around, what call time and service promotions. Right. But I never was after that. So if I did this, I could earn that and I can get paid more, then we do it. If I do this, I get that and I do it, I get more responsibility. They pay me more, let's do it. That's that's what I learned in in the Marine Corps. Getting promoted, for example, uh, if I recruited a friend of mine to enlist in the Marines with me, I sold him on the reason why leaving Chicago was the best thing for our financial future. Shout out to Nathan Schubert. He enlisted with me. We part of the buddy program, went to boot camp together, I got promoted. That's awesome. So I became a private to private first class. Okay. When I was a private first class and I decided to lead my platoon in my my uh specialization school, I'd lead the platoon back and forth from the barracks to school, I'd lead field day, I'd I'd lead all the brains through, making sure we're all squared away for whatever tasks we got going on as a student through going through our specialty school, going to helicopter school, going to door gunner school, cruise school. I led the whole uh class doing it. That was a Lance Corporal promotion. Right? I led him in example, led them in inspection, led them in in movement of the troops from point A to point B.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

I was in charge, right? That was a promotion.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Right? And now and and I said, What's the youngest Marine that got promoted in the Marine Corps Air Station test? And at that time I'm 18, 19 years old. And I hey some Paul, the youngest promotion was uh 20, 21 years old. I'm gonna beat that. And I went from a meritorious promotion. Now this is a much more stringent one. They they had five different areas. We had we had a compete on physical fitness based on a physical fitness test. We had to compete on marksmanship.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Uh I was shooting a rifle. We had to compete on tech TMI, techniques of military instruction. How to teach a class? Okay. Hello, it's entrepreneurship. There you go. Yeah. Uh uh, I'd I'd lead them in um uh uh military, basic military knowledge. Okay. So that I get in front of a board and they ask me a question about the Marine Corps, right? So you had to have good recall. You studied, yeah. Right. Makes sense. I would do my job in this scenario if I was in combat position, whatever we do. And it's all the all the first sergeants, sergeant, most intimidated guys of all the units there interviewing me. Yeah. So I had to read it. No pressure. No pressure, bro. Sweating bullets, man. I'm sure. So I learned how to learn public speaking without me knowing it. Fifth one, I believe my favorite one, which is drill, you know, leading my Marines from point in to point, which again, back to my previous merit promotion, I was doing that already in my military occupational school. And I had much, much more experience than these guys were doing for the very first time. I already did it a year before when I was going through operational school versus now being in the fleet marine force. So I found myself way ahead. Next thing you know, I earned the youngest promotion to corporal on that base before deployment to Somalia.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Yeah, so I was a corporal at that time.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Did you make your Asian parents proud with those promotions? No, hey, I'm the fastest one to get here. Come on. I may not be a doctor, but we got promoted quickly, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:43

I I tell everybody I'm from Chicago. Nobody ever believed me, you know, because I'm Filipino and everybody. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're from Chicago. Everybody uh I relates Chicago to the Chicago Bulls or uh the Super Bowl shuffle. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And then uh my next promotion was promotion to sergeant, and that was another promotion too, as well. But I think being in the Marine Corps led me to taking initiative, asking for more responsibility, which is what entrepreneurs need to do. The other area, too, I said, which I think is much more needed today. In the Marines, we never looked at each other as black and white. You're not a black man, you're not a white man, you're not a Latino man, you're not an Asian man. You are green. Done. You could be light green though, sure. You could be dark green though. Sure. So we never say, hey, hey, hey, Sergeant, you know, that black, that black marine, no, that'd never come out of our mouth. Hey, hey, you know, that dark green marine over there. Interesting. So we never refer to each other by skin color, maybe by reference of skin tone. But today, if the enemy is shooting at us because we have an American flag on our on our shoulder, we represent freedom, patriot, right, patriot patriarchy to our country and the values and principles of America, they're shooting at us, not caring if we're white, black, brown. That's true. What do we care for white, black, or brown? Only a military does that shit. Yeah. Yeah. So today I've I've I've just learned to work with people not based on if they're white, they're black, to brown, they got a college degree, no college degree. Bro, can you do the job?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

And here's the test. Here's and and this is for an extended period of time. And I'm gonna hire two of you guys to compete for it. Okay, because in one of the next three days, I'm gonna see who buckles under pressure who steps up to it.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

And ideally, both of them step up to pressure. Now I got two two two guys that love to thrive on competition.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:17

I've just done that throughout my career, whether you work for me or you work in one of my sales guys in my sales team that become one of my agency builders. Okay. So all the competition is a big uh thing that I got also from from the Marine Corps, creating a competitive uplift now, competitive, but uplifting, encouraging environment to make sure we build a culture and a community that people want to be a part of.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Yeah. Did you grow up competitive?

SPEAKER_03 18:37

What was that like in your upbringing? Uh yeah. Um, the most competitive person in my entire life I know, it's my mom. Okay. I picked one three-quarters woman with a short hair and glasses and a big purse. Uh, but she calls you out, man. She calls you out without you even realizing it. Uh, but she raised us competitive. My sister and I were competitive. Um, and then also, you know, sports in school. There's always a competitive type of situation. What sports did you play? Football, football, basketball, ran track. And one year I got cut from the basketball team. I swam.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yeah, that's bet it's probably my best sport. Kept you out of trouble, though, right? It did. It kept you away from trouble because it's not like I was getting into it. I went to practice to get away from the Latin Kings. Oh, wow. Because at the Latin Kings, at the end of the day, we used to have wear these socks in the 80s and the 90s, went all the way up to here. And what they do, they put a locker for a lock, a locker room lock at the bottom of that sock, and they swing it around like this. Oh my gosh. At the school, so just it was hitting everybody. Um, what's your try for a swim team? Yeah, right. What's your try for a basketball team?

SPEAKER_00 19:33

I'm out of here, but I'm I don't want to get in no fights. That makes sense. Well, let's let's jump back forward into your career then. So you're in financial services now. The first year wasn't exactly, you know, super uh uh love at first sight, super magical right away, super rich right away, right? But talk to me about those first couple of years as you built up your own practice because you know you were making six figures within a couple of years, right? Talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

So I wasn't doing well that first year. So uh I was about by myself, didn't really have a coach, local mentor. And so I thought, you know, there's something good about the insurance industry, I gotta figure it out. Meanwhile, I gotta pay the bills. Of course. So I got three jobs. Okay. I was an Olive Guard server. Okay. I was a G Falou hood technician. Wow. And from five to eight o'clock in the morning, I was a lifeguard. Okay. So nope, nobody's swimming at the YMC at five to eight o'clock, right? So that was an opportunity for me to read books. Oh. So all my personal development, those first three years was so found. Every day I'm just reading the book. Did you have a mentor at this point? No, just you and the book. Just me and the books. Okay. I was so there's no YouTube at this time. Right. So my mentorship was through authors through these books. You know, power, positive thinking, magic thinking big, you know, the greatest uh uh greatest sales, greatest man in Babylon. Yeah, you know, how to raise myself and favor to success in selling, right? Rich dad, poor dad, cash flow quadrant, rich dad of it. Okay, all these books, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just kept reading these books, just consuming content. And then I pick up my kid, drop them off at school, and then go to Olive Garden or go to Jify Loom. Break time. I'm making calls. Hey, I'm gonna set up employment afterward, I'm selling insurance. Right? Pick up my kids by 3:30, get them involved in their daycare, after school daycare program. I'm selling insurance from three to six o'clock. Wow. Right, or four to six o'clock. And then I get to pick them up at six o'clock, and that's the adult class. So I stay, I stay in shape too. So I'm taking my MMA class, UFC class, jiu-jitsu class from six to seven, right? We have dinner, just like every other normal, you know, uh a parent. Um, get them in bed around eight. Uh-huh. And then uh eight to thirty to nine o'clock, there's the last 30 minutes. I make phone calls. Sending up appointments just to get, you know, people to meet me at I. Send appointments, yeah. Yeah. And that's how I do it. And then I found out how to either buy leads or do dinner seminars. Okay. So I'd buy five zip codes, a list, and we mailed to these uh list uh five thousand pieces of mail, five different zip codes, and I'd bring them to an Italian restaurant where I pitch them on my forty five minute nine ways to cut taxes. Oh, okay. All right, and nine ways to cut taxes was some form of retirement planning, Roth IRA, annuity, or life insurance.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Where did you learn the direct mail? Was there system you were plugged into at the firm or how did you learn that?

SPEAKER_03 22:02

So I get these trade magazines in our industry. Okay. These these uh financial marketing organizations, insurance market organizations, because they buy a list of life insurance agents and they send them their magazine. Right? So I'm reading the magazine. Smart. Right? I'm reading the magazine. Well, because that was the internet back then, right? Yeah. We just started coming up. Yep. Arenas magazines, some case studies, call this internet number free leads. So I learned these marketing assists just through just reading magazines. Right. Continuing that's my version of continuing organization. Because I knew my product I just didn't know how to market it and get people to talk to. Right. The conversation I have, I know how to sell a product, I just not get in front of people.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Just get in front of people. Yeah. Talk to me about what the um average turnout at an Olive Garden would look like and what was your conversion rate? I'm sure you had those numbers down if you still remember that.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

Of course I do. So this is a Powerstown restaurant in Westchester, one West Whisper Corporate Center, suite 300.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

He's got it ingrained, tattooed in his brain. I mail it to 60154-6153-60155C. Right? So I know all these zip codes of five zip was I mailed to 65 year old retired married couples that own a home. Oh okay. Let me so the reason why because I know these people have money they have a reason to plan. And they have something to protect. That's right. Yeah. Not that 21 year old that just got out of college. Not the 25 year old single dad of three kids that just got out the Marines. I'm not my target market. Of course. So uh 5,000 pieces of mail um so I'd have to pay for the mailer. Okay. Um I think the budget around that was like 1600 bucks. Okay. Just for the mailer. And then multiply it by 5,000 times first class postage not whenever I get their postage. First class postage gets them within a day or two. Okay. So that was like three, four grand. Uh and then I'd have to spend another two, three grand 20, 30 bucks a plate plus tip when I get to the restaurant. Yeah, okay. And then I got to train the restaurant staff not to interrupt my my presentation.

unknown 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

Then when people say hey you know there's people there granted so out of 5,000 pieces of meal uh approximately uh 100 150 people would call the reserve not a bad response rate for a free correct yeah for for a free to but only 50 people actually show up okay so that that's how it budgeted about a third show rate okay correct so which mean about uh uh 50 buying units because you're usually husband and wife together oh okay yeah right so so you put all so think about this the mailhouse got paid the posters got paid uh the direct uh creator winning style invitation got paid the restaurant servers got paid yeah the staff got paid the last person get paid you and I actually got to sell something yeah yeah I mean hey the heavy is the crown right that's the entrepreneur for you right 12 years bro wow 12 years that and there's phases in there I'm like oh this shit sucks it's just satisfying and I never learned I was saying I never learned to earn referrals I never learned to ask for referrals I was just boom boom boom blind no no mentorship no guidance I've had more mentors along the way to teach me how to do case studies and how to use certain financial products and services better but from a referrability from a marketing standpoint I didn't learn that what at what point now in this journey did you meet your now wife Sheena it was 2012 2000 yeah 2012 okay um I'm doing five gotchas a presentation during nurses week downtown Cook County Hospital which is now called Stroger Hospital okay white memorial is this where your mom works yeah that's right my mom yeah my mom works there she's can you come to the hospital you know the door five five gotchas with five gotchas of money so sorry about that bless her heart yeah because my mom was the product my mom my mom my mom remember she's now a client for 12 years now yeah so she didn't lose any money dot-com dot oh one dot com bubble yep she didn't lose anybody during 07089 great recession testimonial right there she didn't lose any equity yeah she lost the value of the house didn't lose any equity in the house different story right because we pulled out the equity put inside her index universal life policies but the value went down but she preserved her equity wow she cashed out right now she's also got long-term care policy what the heck's long-term care for this I'll bring it up here in a second but now I'm in the hospital because now my mom's the greatest not only referral but testimonial I got yeah so I'm just not you know pulling the favorite mom you're living what we preach about you're the example is to talk to your nurse about it so she would now she talk to her nurses about it which later on she'd end up getting an insurance license. Yep so yeah so she'd she'd uh she'd uh uh uh be in the commission split great yeah let's get mom paid for sure for sure and she got uh she sets up this full of nurses a bunch of vendors so you got the the the prescript the the uh Johnson and Johnson wouldn't be there late because they're selling you know uh uh the medical sales represent together because everybody's posted up during nurses week okay I sit in the corner of my eye it's howdy sitting on the hospital bed I'm like oh my goodness I gotta finish this presentation I got to holler and so uh and so uh the booths right I split with a chiropractic buddy of mine okay so he's doing the health checkup health stress test and I'm doing the financial stress test okay he's got a series of questions for health stress I got a series of questions for financial stress okay so I'm done I said bro you work the booth because I'm going to holler right I'm talking about she knows yep yep so I don't know what you I don't know she worked there and situation wise she was right so I I I I approached her I said excuse by the way this is why all those years in the Marines learning sales skills led you to a moment such as this confidence baby yes confidence and you know what to say no fear of rejection maybe some fear but that's right you're okay with it right you're you're able to shoot your shot with confidence yes definitely right yeah and so I said excuse me miss they're feed they're feeding people now would you like to go get something to eat there you go she goes oh no those are just for the nurses for their you're not a nurse you look like okay you're here sent out a hospital what do you do she goes I sell hospital beds for striker medical like oh I never thought any no so many sell some hospital yeah she goes so what do you do so oh I'm here with the doctor buddy of mine and she oh you uh are you a doctor I'm like in my mind no are you a dual digger it's fair though right and so she goes uh I said uh I I tell you what um uh I'm I'm not a doctor I'm not a doctor I took the the uh the spine and hip you know like the model oh yeah the display where the the chiropractors are showing where they're gonna get you I said uh uh I'm not a doctor but do you like to be manipulated bro she pauses nose flares out three seconds later five seconds later she just busts out like no kidding busts out 100% close rate let's go baby I figured if you I can get them to laugh this way that's why I love comedians gotta learn so much from comedians yeah if I can get them to laugh yeah get my audience to laugh and get whoever I'm talking to at least to laugh that kind of loosens the tension drops the guard a little bit wow and I've I've heard you refer to Sheena as a multiplier before in that life right will you talk about that yeah you know I I I was Sindal for 12 years so the time I got in the Marines figured out I was on the right pattern started going to church turned 30 years old started to go to church accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my Lord God and and so um I started figuring out okay what type of woman what type of woman really should I consider a wife so I'm sitting in church bro I'm sitting in church and uh church goes turn your book your Bibles to the book of Psalms so easy way to find the book of Psalms right in the middle right yeah so I put in my book Bible I don't turn the book of Psalms I look past the middle I go to the right I end up in Proverbs right so he's reading Psalms but I get stuck in Proverbs I just get magnetized to the words right trust in the Lord in other words lean not on your own understanding right acknowledge him and he'll make your path straight there were the borrowers enslaved to the lender right right right uh uh uh uh all plans fail all plans fail for lack of wise counsel magnetized where's this been my whole life right Proverbs 31 a wife a woman of noble character worth more than jewels right and I'm reading them oh there's a checklist bro there's a checklist there's a checklist right I'm because in real time you said you're saying SOP of course Proverbs 31 is a checklist of a woman that I need to look for not what I want to look for but a wife of noble and virtuous character and I told myself if I want a wife of virtuous and noble character I got to be a man right a virtuous and noble character. I can't be a man in the streets but expect a queen a queen at home no I I got I got to be this type to attract that this type of woman so that's I said okay so prayerfully I was asking my Lord okay let's allow me to be these type of adjustment you know uh uh uh uh uh her man her husband will sit amongst kings well so I gotta be worried about singles I got definitely I gotta I gotta build my business so make a long story short my wife she eventually became my wife but everything we've done together everything we've decided to do together projects thoughts ideas just ideation just pinging ideas back and forth to each other it just multiplies sharing ideas and multiply it's annoying because she tells me the things I don't want to hear and I'm annoyed by it I'm like stop killing a damn dream yeah right and so no baby you gotta you gotta watch out for this yeah the discernment of a baby babe you need to be here and stop hanging around these people these are my guys these are my dogs she's like you don't see it but they're just kind of like clout chasing and using you seriously for what I'm I was seeing cloud channel I don't even know what that means. No baby they're using they're only around you when you can bring something to them or when they can get you know some you know they can bring certain opportunities or introductions but they never bring anything to the table I never noticed that oh okay next thing I started to recognize okay so I gotta get my my circle tighter right uh you stay away from that person. Oh stop bow you baby bow you don't act that way around women why I'm trying to be personal to get no baby but you're sending the wrong signal are you trying to tell me how to act yeah it's offensive I've been like this my life yeah so there's so much discernment between her discernment between her that she evoked into my life that things I was not normally aware of that now I can be aware of now I know now how people put that nuts on my back. Wow right and so blessing yeah uh so she's she's done that with people in my life relationships the business we started doing the business together she took care of led all the operations and she's she's sick at sales now yeah she's a better insurance agent than I ever will be yeah you know and uh a lot of women today think about insurance though think about insurance insurance I would say is a product that women love because it's about production yeah security safety yep your product stock market product Walmart Wall Street product real estate product that's that's the investment men love.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

It's true right because more upside upside potential bang right yeah isn't a slow methodical protection along the way yeah so more women are actually better at selling insurance than than men are yeah yeah so I got a funny story from uh because I'm actually a client uh I worked with uh Anthony and Krista Griffith so um got connected with them I'm trying at one of your events actually I got connected with Griff took great care of me awesome guy just asked me good questions we swapped numbers uh you know one day we're on the highway driving my wife and I and uh semi swerves a little crazy my wife Erin she turns to me and she says I think we should get some life insurance yeah yeah yeah it was one of those where you know semi and I've got a little Honda C RV you know not not too much you can do against that man I can't even step on the accelerator and four bagger no exactly exactly so uh hybrid uh so great gas mileage but uh yeah four beggar um so you know I I'm like okay cool no problem I reach out to uh to Griff they come to the house they sit us down and uh Krista actually tells us a story about how they were supposed to buy a house in Houston and Sheena recruited them to come out here and move to Dallas. And so it's so funny because I've heard stories about your wife now for years.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

Yeah um this is a woman of influence of persuasion um but also of comfort and joy I've heard nothing but good things about her man so you've definitely uh made the right call she's uh she uh she's taught me to because me I I aggressively recruit and hire her not so much time yeah she you if you want to be part of the inner circle you it's time you gotta show you bring value and then you're there with the right makes sense with the right uh principles because I know I know you know uh around us just me being an entrepreneur I can't believe I'm saying this doing this now for 27 years. Wow that if people are around us they'll get paid. Yeah I know that I'm gonna do things in my life there's gonna be fruit there's gonna be opportunity there's gonna be uh plenty of of of of bread on the table everybody will eat around us now you may not get rich quick overnight of course but you're gonna have your opportunities you're gonna get your shots and I think that's where a lot of people when they're around me just because they're around me and I've been at this for a minute. Right right they expect to have this type of excess in year one you know and I think and then we're almost three decades in. Bro and when I don't hand it to them when I don't fool but they think it they take it personal. I'm I'm Max guy when it's a retro how come he just doesn't spoon seemingly up oh you got you got to constantly earn it man yeah and then I'm gonna push you and challenge you to see if you really want want to deal with this type of but I promise you if you're around us long term you're gonna be benefiting a long time for example you know Karen our our executive assistant you know Karen Leftine's been around us 13 years. Wow 13 years you know so she she's an example of somebody that's had our back office our operations and somebody that is an is is somebody that I mean that comes into our operations team she's kind of like that's not a you know she's with 13 years. She's taking care of us we take care of and we told Karen unless the Lord has different plans if you're around us you'll always have paycheck you'll take good care of her.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Yeah that's awesome that's awesome so let's I want to start to transition into um the last I guess 10 years of your career that you know because it's been it's been a ride. Yeah it is right I think I I remember reading you went from I think you had 27 agents at one point and then I didn't I did my research. Now you've got over 3000 right so 500 5000 now. Okay so maybe that was outdated broke really fast. Tells me you keep growing though year over year which I love. Talk to me about how when you guys were looking for a new opportunity where you really wanted to build an agency, how you went through a decision making framework that led you to Patrick Bed David who we know very well and uh is is a big name in the space set so funny you're asking me this question because I'm I was actually I'm scripting it right now.

SPEAKER_03 36:30

Back to pain. Back to pain. I got recruited to an organization where it's hey Matt listen we like your brand but come over here you can scale in agency with us and I said I'm we're gonna do it but you can't tell me not to be the Money Smart guy. Yeah you can't tell me that the last 12 years of my branding in the financial service I have to surrender that because the insurance industry financial services are very compliant type world yeah and Matt you know some companies said your brand doesn't qualify to be a part well I'll just be on my own then. So this company large company though you know a large company been around for a while no we'll let you we'll let you do that right not realizing that yeah I didn't really have the power to really say that so I'm I'm two and a half three years in and we just we we just explode. Remember she comes in my life right now she we're doing this together now and and um it's so cool when in business and in my personal life my wife's always had my back so cool to know that I can't believe just for last knowing my previous background bro because I think a lot of personal life bleeds into your professional life the last 13 14 years I've been intimate with one woman if you told me that if you told me that in my 20s I wouldn't believe you. Wow it's been the greatest thing praise God and and it's been a multiplying thing and I think God is honoring that that process and there is there's like no desire to skip out and I'm and I'm I'm around bro I'm in the mighty business I'm around attractive talent of course all the time I'm I'm not I'm not dead. Right. I said you're hot you're out but there's zero desire to say oh let me just like let me let me throw some game none of that and so when I'm in this opportunity now Sheena's with me she's watching my back and we get invited to this uh um uh training event and they're recognizing it the the top builders the last uh the last year year and a half and I you know I I got recognized I brought up I got brought up there I brought up Sheena we're the number one in both United States and Canada wow agency builders out of what 5000 agents wow so we're number one right the licensing and production and amount of people around us making money again making that Asian heritage right always gotta be number one number one and so um and then the next day bro so so the next after post to her you know she said I'm a wife you know surprised everybody uh at the event the next day I'm being told I mean the president's off hey the president wants to see you oh cool president wants to see where number one guy right yeah and again in that boardroom the woman sitting across us in the boardroom on the other side of the of the of the conference table she's got these beady eyes no motion looking at it she's looking at it she's open up some manila folder president starts having a conversation we're right there and she says it's it comes to our understanding oh boy that when people come to your office they don't see our company's name they see your company's name and we've also seen that you've incorporated in your states in that company's yeah for tax purposes man tax purposes but mind you if we're recruiting them on his agents they're on this platform this infrastructure of our insurance agency right I just want you to think that you got a good brand out there brother because you don't got a good brand out there my brand my brand is better than your brand yeah I've been the last two and a half years because the person recruited me in said I could do that. I can't do that yeah well it's your office and I said that's exactly right it's my office my lease I pay it you don't pay it yeah right you've never been to it you can't tell me what sign I can rob yeah so at that point well we got to do an investigation investigation which is code for we got to shut down your commissions to make sure you're not building another insurance agency and robbing guys into another company which I get okay which I get okay but bro the way they treat us doing their process I said to myself babe we don't own shit do we we're doing all this stuff here for two and a half three years yeah three years three years we haven't owned nothing going on four years we own nothing we have no say so the person that recruited has no say so and I want to snapshot how old are you and how many kids do you have at this point early 40s early for okay early 40s um with now Joe and Joe that's four. Okay because she brought Jojo to the build I had my three yeah I think it's important for people to understand the stage of life you're in when this kind of stuff happens you know yeah so early 40s because that's just starting getting a rhythm yep right started taking off they say I'm right rug pull I realized that agency could just shut me down and I looked at the contract and I say I call a contract attorney I want to shoot these guys he read the contract it says you do not own any assets any list client list uh team list it's all the assets of the corporation that you're a part of like kid I why didn't it right and so inside it's 2020 right yeah so one of my guys says why'd you call a Patrick? So what you know about Patrick I here's some good things about him. So this is a friend of my friends kind of a refrigerator okay and so I go back to my DMs because Patrick reached out to me five years prior when he first started PHP and you have the you have the receipts I do I do 09 December 09 uh October 09 he reaches out to me when he first started PHP and then we didn't really circle back into an extra conversation until December 2014. Okay. So December 2014 hey Sa Paul come over here you can be the guy you can brand first question can I brand here? You're not gonna get in my way you're not gonna take anything away no Paul please do I'm asking these guys to brand I'm building thing called valuetainment. Yep yep yeah please brand practice what I preach right you're doing the same thing I'm building a brand here and it's gonna help build build your agency etc etc nobody's doing it you could be the guy to do it you know and so then nobody's in Chicago and you can help lead an uh expansion of our company in Chicago you'll get my personal coaching and mentoring and this office was in Oak Brook at the time okay yep and so I said okay all right and then uh Sheena's in the back on Skype gain face on yeah all right Patrick let me get back to you we're talking about my wife of course and and by the way if I was to rewind previous to seven days before that when that happened that suspension happened with that previous company my wife says on that couch every day crying and the way that company talked to my wife the way that they come and caught us on on on that no no respect. I have no respect for corporate and anyway so here now I'm like let me uh let me prove to these guys two two things let me prove to these guys they lost yeah right definitely and they were an asset and then number two let me prove to this guy that's willing to take me under his wing to coach me because there's there's there's two ways you can become a cash flow man there's two ways you can really become successful. You can found it yourself build it yourself take a swing at swing of the fences go for it hit a home run hitram slant that's one way to do it. The second way to do it is to find somebody already doing it and improve upon what they're doing. That's what I did with Patrick I found what he was doing, find a way to improve upon it take his system take his process we put our own flavor to it and we became the move it became the Money Smart movement with inside PHP. Wow so that that the the whole notoriety with his guidance with his coaching structure his mentorship his his his leadership in that area for me to develop play through pain and let pain become really fuel to what I was doing. Using an enemy huh that's right oh that's right I exactly yeah they were right they were number one entry numero uno good and it's not like I got to clap back to them that's why I'm not even mentioning their name right now. Yeah but they know who they are yeah right I'm not they know what they lost yeah they got the this video is going to end up if I it does end up the side of the I'll I'll forward it to them. Sure. Right just just let them know that I don't have to go to their level to call the name out because every I think everybody in that company or even in the industry the word is out they they know who they are. And so so because here's the rumors they said there's two things that the company lost at the company I'm talking about two people that the Company lost was one of the greatest losses that company's ever lost. First one was Patrick Met David. Second one was me. You're kidding. You're kidding. Not my words, their words. I'm just reiterating it. Wow. Um, from some of the leaders over there. And uh they would have had a better time finding ways to partner with us than to try to put this under the corporate squeeze.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Yeah. And this is 2014 when this shift happened. 2014. Okay, got it. And so now we're sitting here 12 years later, right? A lot happened over that next 10-year run. Yeah. Uh, I want to focus for a second, though, on your relationship with Patrick because again, I I've been uh I think Patrick was the first business influencer I ever followed. I'm a young entrepreneur, so I'm 27 years old. I got out of college and started jumping into entrepreneurship and I've been off the hill with YouTube. Indiana University, go Hoosiers, we just won the national championship, baby.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

No, there would be an IU powerhouse, man. Oh man, it's been my dad went there for a semester. Oh, yeah. We came for the Philippines. He was a swimmer.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Oh, that's cool. That's cool. Okay, this is a great school, great school, beautiful campus. I don't know if you've been, but beautiful. Thanks to Mark Cuban. Yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go. But um, I want to focus on your relationship with Patrick because I think something Patrick is well respected for is he creates leaders who create leaders. True. Right? I think that's what a signature is, or at least that's how I perceived it, as I've watched him over the years. So could you speak to what has that mentorship done for you and meant to you?

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Our vision statement, even for our company and the money smart one, our vision statement is building leaders that build leaders. Okay. Right? His vision statement is making sure that we disrupt and diversify the financial services industry by saving America through the mission, which is saving America through free enterprise, giving hope back to breaking down to share family. Okay. So when I saw that vision, Patrick casted me that vision. It wasn't about me, it wasn't about what can you produce? What can you produce? He sold me first on his vision. He sold me first about what I could become. What we can do is a byproduct of the vision.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

And I as a I've never been around a guy that sold me on a vision that's locked in like that. I've never been around a guy that.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Did he have other guys producing at a pretty high level at this point? Because when you're selling a vision, I think there's two types of entrepreneurs selling that. There's the ones that have the proof of concept of, hey, go look at John Mason and look at what he's done. Sure, sure. Then you also have like, hey man, you're getting in on the ground floor and we can build something big together. And those are very different visions you're selling, right?

SPEAKER_03 46:10

I came on in the six year of the company. Okay. So the company had already been established for five going on six years. And uh no at that time, nobody was earning more than $350 a year. Okay. Okay, which to that was King Kong. Oh my God, $20,000 in a month. Yeah. Well, the thing I brought to the table is that, bro, you don't got to tell me that the insurance industry is a solid industry. I got 12-year experience doing dinner seminars and five-point piece mailing. Yeah. And the moment you allowed me to transition my sales skills to leadership development skills and building other people's skills, it's game over. And I remember Patrick coming to our office. It was interviewing my guys. Tell me how to do this. Tell me how to do this. Tell me how this all had the same question, different answers. Interesting. I'm thinking to myself, oh shit, he just identified a leak in my business, which is what I'm not standardized.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Why?

SPEAKER_03 46:58

I'm not system driven. I'm not simple, duplicatable. Everybody's talent driven. I can't duplicate that way.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

So so we standardized. He didn't call me in front of my guys, but him just asking it actually silently called me out.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Yeah, absolutely. I gotta prove this shit. Yeah. And then and then what a way to teach you that lesson, too, right? It's one thing to tell you, it's another for you to hear it from your guys. That's right. And then somebody so all my guys left.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

It's a Saturday night, 11 o'clock at night.

unknown 47:25

Okay?

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Because I bring out uh he he was promoting his book at the time called The Next Perfect Storm. Okay. So I did the book tour for him. So I hosted him to come out to Chicago, promote his book. Next perfect storm was which would help I promote his book, which helped me potential good candidates or potential clients for our for agency. Yep. Then we went to lunch, saw my guys weren't standardized, excused my guys. We're in my office, bro, on a Saturday night, close to midnight. Still chopping it up. He's like Siphalla. Uncharted territory. What? You're going to uncharted territory. You're gonna go places where nobody in your company's ever gone before. Because if you're able to do this with no systems, winging it, just telling you, man, if I inject systems, I inject accountability, I inject protocol uncharted territory.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 48:19

And sure enough, bro, we became the first two. Our our our our our mod with inside the company and PHP is we're the first two. First two, first, we're the first of $400,000 income, first of $500,000 income. Matter of fact, the company created a ring for us when people reached $750,000 income. No, okay. Wow. So hey Sapala. Sick flex. Tom Ellsworth calls me. Hey, Sapala, uh, what ring do you want your what color do you want your ring? I'm like, why? Because it ain't no ring. You hit it, but nobody got it. You're the first one. You set the standard, baby. Come on. Okay, let's make it this. Yeah. Uh, we're the first to one million dollar income, first of two million dollar income, first it promotes somebody to make a million dollar and two million dollar income, right? So we're promoting all these guys out because one thing Patrick uh uh did well, even in the exit, even after he exited, right? $2050 million exit, we got stack stock equity ownership in the company. We had a nice exit uh cash, and we still had got stock in the company. They're still privately held and potentially allegedly about hurt rumors about it go going public. Oh very cool, right? But company still grew after he left 66%.

unknown 49:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

So we still grew. So that's not a testament to the leader. Sure. You know how for sure. Funny thing too, Ajay, is that most companies like us, when the founder leaves, usually a company breaks up. Really? And guys like us start our own company. That makes sense. Wow. I'm our own company. We're we're doing we're doing $40,000, $50,060 million a year in production. We're about to crack $100 million a year in production. Insurance companies would love to be all we we've helped the last four years $122,000 clients, $122,000 client applications without ever buying the lead. Wow. We're not even social media advertising. Word of mouth. Oh my god. My first 12 years, all direct mail. You know, uh uh direct mail advertising. Now, taught our guys referrals, taught our guys how to earn business, how to have public speaking events, how to go in the community, be a value of the community, that people want you at their event to speak about financial services with indirectly, then directly creates lean generation for them.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

It's worked.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

It's incredible. So I want to understand the difference that happened in your life over this about three-year window. I think I remember in an interview I heard it was 38 months when you guys cracked 100 grand a month. Does that sound right? 37, okay, okay. And then you never look back. Not to be not to be uh just get specific. Let's get specific. Before you had joined PHP, what was the most amount of money you had made in the year? 350. 350. Okay. So you were on par with what the top agents were over at PHP. And then you had a new system, and that's what helped you explode.

SPEAKER_03 50:46

My own my goal is a patch. And and back to that 11 o'clock meeting, I'm dropping about the Renaissance Hotel. I'm dropping them off. He says Sepala. I'm not afraid to coach talent. So I said, PBD, I'm glad you're not. And if you can see me, I don't think I was talented, but if you think I'm talented, amen. But I PBD, I just need to get to half of the rally income. To me, that's a big deal. That's how big I was thinking. I I need to get to half million dollars in income. It says, I'm not afraid to coach talent. I'll get you there. I promise you, stay locked in. It's not gonna happen overnight. There's gonna be a process, it's gonna be an evolution, but you'll be able to piss off who you ever need to piss off and live the life you've never lived. That's the only one that ever dream about in your goals, dreams will accomplish that. Yeah. And there's a lot of milestones in the company that we've established as the first two, because for example, nobody ever remembers, you know, Roger when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. Yep. I ran track in high school, so yeah, I studied the race. Yeah. Right. Four minute mile, first time ever. Who was who's the second guy to do it?

unknown 51:54

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

Exactly. Exactly. Now, he might broke his record. Sure. But he wasn't first to do it. And then it was broken again and again and again and again. He wasn't the first, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:03

Nobody remembers the record breaker. Everybody remembered the first two.

SPEAKER_03 52:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

That's an interesting concept.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so that that relationship with Patrick, odd to have a mentor be a mentor in the categories of my life. I wanted mentorship in. Yeah. The faith, finance, fitness, and fun. Fantastic. And on Sundays, football. There you go. There you go. Right? And not necessarily an order on Sundays.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

You're right. Are you still a big Bears fan, by the way? Bear down, baby. But we lost this last. I'm scared to tell you. My wife's from Wisconsin, so we are a package. But hey, they beat us this year. Hey, I'm a cheese grader. They might be cheese heads, but I mean I'm the cheese grader. There you go. There you go. But I I want to I want to talk about just for a split second the lifestyle change that happens. Because when you go from making 15 to 30 grand a month, right? You're not worried about dinner. You're not worried about, you know, renting a car when you travel. You're not worried about stuff like that. Very different than making 100 grand a month, though. That's a very different cash flow, right? Talk to me about what changed in your life and both do's and don'ts for mindsets for people as they transition on that upswing. We have a lot of entrepreneurs in our audience.

SPEAKER_03 53:12

We experienced food freedom at 250, meaning we can go to Whole Foods, not worry about the grocery bill. Yep. We go to any restaurant, not worry about the bill. We can fight over lunch at a nice restaurant we love. Right. Not at Denny's. Sure. I can't remember last time I went to Denny's. Can't remember last time I went to IHOP. Remember last time I went to Waffle House, which is an area I always went to when I was making it. You mentioned it earlier.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

That was where you sit down when you're booking appointments, right? That's my office.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

Right. Uh so we experienced food freedom. And when I saw the budget of our food at 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 a month, I'm like, are you serious? We spend that much money on foodie. That's more than my entire overhead used to be, right? Yeah, bro. This is my whole military salary. Yeah. We eat that much, we we eat that much food going up. But I didn't feel we didn't feel it. Yeah. For us, that was at 250. Okay. Okay. Uh 500,000. I started feeling um uh uh uh car freedom. Okay. Like I can go and apply for any car uh uh I want to drive Mercedes BMW. It wouldn't be the exotics though. That's okay. Uh but if I can buy a BMW, uh a Cadillac Escalade because I love escalate, we can go get it and be approved. Okay. 750, we spare us a little bit of family freedom. I can retire my mom. Or I could tire my dad. I can retire my wife's, my in-laws. Yeah. That's what we did. Uh a million dollars is, and by the way, we make a million dollars, we still hadn't bought a house yet.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Really?

SPEAKER_03 54:33

So I didn't bought a house yet. Yeah. So the difference between the mortgage payment of what we wanted and what we were renting, $3,000 a month, we saved that difference and reinvested that back into capital into the business. That makes sense. Uh uh staff, personnel, office space, furniture. I've never filled out an SBA loan. I didn't even know I wouldn't, you know, maybe you go to SBA.gov to figure out how to figure out how to do it. I've never outside charging credit cards, I've never filled out, I've never done a business loan ever. 27 years. I don't know how to didn't even need to do a PPP loan during the pandemic. Had no clue how to fill out a business loan. Fantastic. Always saved and invested the difference and maintained a high cash capital position.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

So do you recommend that for newer entrepreneurs to put off uh buying that home to save that difference, invest it in the business? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

Yeah. Because you at the same time, too, as well, you don't know if the house that you're at is where you really want to anchor down. I mean, we're making a million bucks already, and we moved to Dallas for the first year we purposely rented.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:28

Just to figure out where we wanted to go. What's what the flow is? It's a huge area. DFW is massive. Right. And uh the corporate home office was here in Addison, so we got an office in Carrollton to be to build a relation with our home office personnel and staff. But we like anything above and beyond the the Tolly on 121 President Bush. We love this area. Yeah, right. Um, and so that was kind of like our idea. We looked at Flower Mount, South Lake, West Lake. That was great areas, yeah. Perto is right there by the airport. Yep. But it really wasn't our being in Dallas and Fort Worth quickly. That's right. Really, it wasn't really our vibe. We love Plana, we love Frisco where we're at right now. Yeah. And so, okay, now now we'll buy. Yep. But meanwhile, we're saving the difference. And I think for every young entrepreneur out there building, I think they spend and live on the business too soon.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

Right.

SPEAKER_03 56:09

I think you need to be more disciplined, cash and capital, because when opportunity happens, you got the cash and liquidity to do it.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Cash is king.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you're you're saving not just to save and hoard, you're saving to have mobility and flexibility, to have more ability to say yes to opportunity versus no. Right. Right. And so uh right now, there's there's so many opportunities right now for us to own our own office building that to rent one, but we're waiting for the right one. Meanwhile, we we rent. And so those are the things that people don't. I wasn't bro, I wasn't wearing a pair of Jordans until I was 43 years old. Okay. And how many pairs do you have now? Oh, I guess closetful. Yeah. But then a lot of the day. Yeah, and then Padre was the one who gave us our first pair of J's after we won a contest. He wore us on stage. Here's first my first pair of J's. That's dope. Right? Especially growing up in Chicago, right? During the Jordan era. Come on. Which is an example of delayed gratification. Yeah. Right? And so I invested everything back into the machine. Everything was back into the machine, selling money away, improving that creative score, showing I'm a good manager of finances. You know, it doesn't have to be 800. As long as you're my experience, 720, 747, 60. So long as you're somewhere around around there, a lot of banks will do will do business with you. Okay. That was my uh experience. Yeah. And then um, and then uh now I set a goal. That's I've got my first pair of jades. If I hit a certain personal goal every month to leave my company, drive my company, I get a I get I I get a pair of jades. Okay. If I if I improve it by 44 percent, 40 percent, 30 per 40 percent, I get two pairs of jades. Okay. So those little stupid things, bro. To this day, my wife, it's funny, I took the video this morning. My wife is leaving the house. She's got a Samsung egg backpack. But that Stanley mug's gotta be Louis Vuitton. I love it. It's it's it's it's it's a dumb thing, but we never get we don't get caught up in Louis, you don't get caught up in Gucci. Yeah, you know, the things that we the things that we buy are bro. All right, so she's leaving the house. Yeah, right? My wife. She has a snapshot backpack. That's my wife, you know. That's incredible. The only reason why we have Louie and Gucci is because people give it to us. Yeah, not because we we have an account or we have a free room. Sure. You know, I can't remember last time I was down here in Legacy West at Gucci or Louis or Tiffany or whatever those brands are.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Yeah. You know, it's funny. My wife and I we we honeymooned in Italy in uh 2024, and I remember thinking, like, man, I should treat myself. I had an okay year, right? And so we went down to Louis Vuitton, and uh here I'll show you. I bought myself uh a wallet that I still use, and it's funny. Oh, it's in my back pocket. Hang on. It's funny, you know, it's it's a nice wallet, right? Real Italian leather. Oh, it's Gucci. I said Louis, my bad. That's what what I'm trying to illustrate here, though, is it has no meaning to me. You know, I I thought I was gonna be so impressed at myself. Every time I take this out, I'd be thinking about money. Man, I'm like, I I had a $12 Amazon wallet for about six years, and that thing I used until the wheels fell off. You know what I'm saying? And now I look at it, and it's almost like when you get nicer stuff, now there's a maintenance to it, right? Now you're more afraid of losing it. It takes up more brain space, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

And and uh here's the thing too, bro. During the pandemic, right? During the pandemic, the Louis Vuitton LVMH became one of the richest companies, richest men in the world. Yeah. Okay. And uh the irony is we were given government checks, COVID checks, unemployment checks. And I remember going downtown during the pandemic, used to visit uh one of my buddies downtown Chicago. And I walked into a like a Nordstrom or Saxes Avenue, completely empty, and always and I told the guy, I said, When's the last time you sold a suit? So I don't sell shoes, my buddy. I'll tell you what, we do sell. We sell a bunch of these damn Gucci shoes and Louis shoes, a bunch of these kids from the south side of Chicago, west side of Chicago from the hood. They got their $1,200 today. That's right.

unknown 1:00:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:04

It's right. And so, and and and from a financial principle, that we're so statused up. This call our culture there's so status up that what you what you wear, what you you know, it's your status. Yeah. I was I was ordering uh a Chick-fil-A. I pull up in my rolls or Chick-fil-A. Guys like, man, cool car, man. Can you give me some tips? I look at his belt buckle, it's Gucci. I said, You want you I said, you want to know some, when you want to know the tip? He says, uh, it's gonna sting. You sure want to hear this? He says, No, tell me, man, I want to drive a rolls. I go, well, start there. Start with your belt. I never knew somebody that has a Gucci belt is a work belt. I don't know why you have to buy a Gucci belt to take all your earnings here from Chick-fil-A to buy a Gucci belt. So I don't know, I'd start there. And also I'm driving his roles after 20 years in the game. Right. Right? And I don't know, you see a bunch of your peers on TikTok and social media in their 20s and 30s driving it. But listen, I own this, man. I don't lease this. Yeah, I own this. And and and when you're looking at the status of LVMH, who made LVMH rich? The largest purchasers of LVMH, Louis Vuitton, Moway, and Hennessy, is a black and brown community. And we wonder why we don't have more black and brown millionaires in America.

unknown 1:01:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

Let's start there. Yeah. A little controversial, but we're think about this. Every time I walk into a place and somebody sees, I don't know, my my belt buckle or something, because I wear it because people give it to me. Because I I I have to wear it. Right. Oh man, I like the shoe. They noticed that right away. I'm like, stop noticing that, bro. Stop focusing on the colour. I got focus, but maybe uh the the the question you might be able to ask me. That's it, because we made a French guy rich. The black broad community made a French guy rich, but then we buy his we buy his crap.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:45

Wow. A lot of lessons in there. And there's so many different things I want to touch on because Matt, your your wealth of knowledge across different topics as you tell stories, man. I want to come back to recruiting for a second. Because yeah, man, I mean, you're you're kind of the king, right? You over 5,000 agents. Talk to me about, I guess, your current methodology with recruiting and some some lessons you've learned along the way. After that, just back of the mind, I want to talk about compensation structures because I know you guys are very entrepreneurial in how you recruit. So let's start with just methodologies though.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:14

Uh back to pain. I was recruited into an industry because of pain. I cannot recruit somebody if they're content, comfortable, don't want to apply. And by the way, this all I don't care if you're broke, somebody feels that they're broke and they're comfortable. I can't move that guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

It's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:28

I was just talking to a guy here. Um, we're talking about land rights and mineral rights. Oh, yeah. He he uh he's got mineral rights to land and his double white trailer is on it. You're joking. And so uh the guy was telling me they offered him a $10 million check for the mineral rights, right? No kidding. And the guy says, Man, you know, I had no money before here, uh, I have no money now, and I'll have no money afterwards. I decline your check. See, that's a mentality. Money is more a position and situation and status of your mind and your mindset versus your bank account. And when you're looking at the scenario of if I want to be wealthy, it's got nothing to do with where you went to school, the degree you have, the upbringing you're a part of, who raised you, who didn't raise you, um, uh oppressed, you know, victim, don't matter, don't care. Yeah, and everybody's got some form of victimhood impression. I I I was talking that repression and victim language for a long time. Sure. If only she didn't do this, I've married this person, uh, only did this, right? Uh, people ain't doing business because I'm brown. Instead of saying, bro, can you just get better?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:30

Can you just get better? Yeah. And and now, uh, once I started looking past my identity, my my outside shell. I started looking at the value I can bring from the heart, from the spirit, from the from the gut, and bring it up, people started getting attracted to that. Patrick never recruited me because he was gonna put a million bucks. He recruited me to a vision, he recruited me to something we can become, he recruited me to a lifestyle. And if that's a lifestyle and a vision that we're willing to pay the price to earn.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:58

Right? First, first question, what type of life do you want to live? Number two, what price are you willing to pay? And number three, how will you feel when you finally get it? And number four, along the way, what are you gonna tell yourself when distractions come your way to get you off track to reaching that goal, that future life that you want to live?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:14

Right? And and oftentimes people have an answer for that.

unknown 1:04:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:17

You know, for example, in our workshops, two, three times a week, either way for me to recruit people. How much money do you want to have on a monthly basis for therefore you know having to work again for the rest of your life? People give me numbers: 10,000, 20,000, 50,000. Cool, a million a month, awesome. Yeah, right? So let's do some math. Take that number, 10,000, for example, sure. Multiply it by 12. We get 120,000. Okay, divide that by 0.04, boom, 3 million. That's how much you need to save in a retirement account, savings account, investment account to draw on 4% a year to get on for the rest of your life. So my question to you is what are you doing today to get there?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:55

Louis Vuitton, Moy Hennessy.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:57

All right, generational wealth, right? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:01

Right. So based on I'm not saving nothing, great. So you never get there. So you got you got the I'm gonna work till I die plan. Yeah. And you'll never have 10,000, 20,000 a month to ever retire unless you do something about it today. Because the greatest asset that we have today is not necessarily the skill, necessarily the money, but it's the time. Yeah. We have to grow that money, to grow that skill, to compound and grow and to be exponentially either linearly or exponentially grow. I choose exponential growth.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:27

Right. So when your brand was a lot smaller, because obviously money smart guy is blown up, and I want to talk more about that later. But um, when you were earlier and and you had a smaller brand and you know, people didn't interview off the street like they do now, right? Um, talk to me about how you were finding people, right? I mean, I I don't think you're one of the best buy bathrooms to recruit people, even though it worked for you, right? So where uh where are you finding folks? Chambers of Commerce. Really?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:50

Chambers of Commerce, Toastmasters. Chambers of Commerce and Toastmasters. Two or three ones uh uh Toastmasters because I got to learn public speaking. Okay. And I was around other leaders. That want to be better communicators and and usually there are also candidates to become my client or potentially get involved in a career or profession where they can get actually paid what they're looking to get paid.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

Makes sense. And there's there's a there's a internal piece where you know they are growth-minded if they're somewhere like that, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:18

Uh uh chambers of commerce, because I got to practice my pitch. Okay. You know, you chamber of commerce, 30 seconds, everybody tell everybody what you do, right? So I went, oh my gosh, all this pressure. Right? So I had I could practice my 30-second pitch. It's and it's changed over time, but it's just longer than you do, you come uh you're just more confident. And the flip side to that, the more you build your personal brand, the less you got to do that, though.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:42

Because they kind of get to know you, consume your content, and by the time they reach out to you, or they they reach into you a little bit online, like, hey, I like what you do, what you're about, tell me what you do. Yeah. Yeah, uh, or how you can help me more specifically, because they kind of have an idea of what you already do. Totally. But that there was practice a lot. And now today, I go back to videos I did. I I've had a YouTube channel 17 years. Wow. And I'm I'm 17 years. How long has YouTube been around? Been around a minute, been around a minute. Yeah. Yeah. And uh, because I really started posting videos in 07.

unknown 1:07:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:14

Oh, six, oh seven, right? And I look at old videos, big baggy suits. Yep, yep, yep. Right? These type of things. But my premise was I'm just doing it and practicing. And for me, I'm never I like I haven't had a Patrick but David video. I don't have his brand. Like, he'll go vow, people the world loves him, right? Uh the Lord said at his time, based on his consistency and his obedience to his calling, he was gonna elevate Patrick, right, to a certain role. Same thing with me. I've I just got a different timeline with the Lord. I just got a different timeline. I can't compare myself to anybody else's timeline. Right. I need to come pair to myself. Am I getting better? Am I studying analytics? Am I just the work? Yeah, doing the work. I tell my guys, if you're making phone calls, record yourself the whole time, the whole hour you're making phone calls. Great. Then rewind the rewind the game club. Exactly. Like an athlete would review his practice. Yep. You're reviewing your calls that day.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

What's your filler words? Where do you show your nervous? Yeah. Where's your lack of tonality? Where's your lack of confidence? How come you stick to the script in this area? Yeah. How come you don't know that about that product? Take those notes. The next day you make calls again. And you show up those, you show up those leaks, you get you're getting stronger. Boom, boom. That's it. Drill, practice, rehearse. And over time, you start to master it. It's not gonna happen overnight. I was interviewing Ed Slott one year. He's known as America's IRA expert. Okay. Right? And uh he's got a book out there, you know, how to void the tax time bomb. And he says, Matt, listen, here's what I know about my career. I know the Wall Street Journal, namely the America's IRA expert. Here's what I know you do the same thing, same profitable thing, every day, every year for the next 20 years, and then you'll be an overnight success. Overnight success. And I think today with social media, you do the same thing over and over, it can make it cut, it cuts it in half. Yeah, you do the overnight success in 10 years. Yeah. Because a lot of people get jaded by what they think is success on social media. Right. I see because I see these guys all the time. I'm at the conferences, I'm with them, I see them as clients. They have they may have millions of followers, but no business. They have millions of followers, and then next you know the social media channel changes their algorithm. Yeah. Right? I remember that happened to Foo uh Foozitube. Okay, yep. FoosyTube, prank, prank channel. Yep. Hilarious pranks, right? Yeah. Make his money, make his money, make his money, following, following, following. Make sure you don't they change their algorithm. His channel, then he deals with depression. It's too bad. Right. So I for me, what's what that was making successful for me because I can't control the algorithm. Right. But I can control the algorithm of my daily activities. Definitely. That's what I control. Control.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

That reminds me of the first time I read uh one of Russell Brunson's books, the uh dot com secrets, I think is one of his best ones, right? Where he he talks about owned media as a concept a lot, right? I remember uh when I threw my first uh big event because I have a community of of real estate investors that are focused on land flipping, on messy title. And I was like, God had called me to throw an event. And uh I threw an event for investors, but I remember when I was marketing to them, I didn't have an email list. I didn't have a Facebook group. But I had a couple Facebook friends and I had phone numbers. Yeah, that's what I used, man. I went to every event I can go to. I I did affiliate marketing with everybody I knew that had their own email lists, but I was like, man, this is really hard to do if you don't have your own lists. And so that was the trigger for me. And why now I've got Chris on the team and we focus a lot on how do I capture an email, how do I capture a phone number, what are we doing in Go High level, you know? So there's there's a lesson in that, but um, but it's a beautiful, beautiful event. We ended up uh, I think I I told you this one of the first times I met you. We you prayed with me actually. We we did uh uh awareness to fight human trafficking. We worked with Liberating Humanity, the guys that did uh the Sound of Freedom, and it was amazing. We spread awareness, we fundraised almost $40,000. So glory to God, it was fantastic. Yeah, I was man, I was young when I was 25 years old when God called me to it. And uh I was like, Lord, I don't I don't know how to throw an event, I don't know how to throw a fundraising gala, I don't know how to get a keynote speaker. Yeah, and he says, Great, did you think Jonah knew what he was doing? Daniel knew what he was doing, Elijah knew what he was doing. I've called you to do it, you'll figure it out on the way. Follow the call. That's scary when you hear that from the Lord, right? And so ended up being being beautiful for full circle.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:14

We figured it out, but um, yeah, I I'm pulling up a photo, I'm not texting you, I'm pulling up a photo. Yeah. Because people ask me, how long you've been doing uh cigars wealth and whiskey. Yeah. And uh I'll just give you an example, you know, uh this might not be all of it, but uh what is the Cigars Wealth and Whiskey? Um Cigars Wealth and Whiskey here, right? So I've been doing this event. Yeah, Cigars Wealth and Whiskey. Uh long time, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:44

Um June 8th, 2013. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:48

13 years ago, Cigars Wells and Whiskey. Wow. It's just evolved. Of course. This used to be just five guys, ten guys. He said many more guys want to be part of it. So what? 200 last time I went to one. Gosh. And I think I want to I'm gonna bring it back down. Oh because like this. Yeah. Like I I I know we've been through a lot of events together, but why has it only been a year and a half later I get to have this sit down with you? I think we need to do more of that to create more in you know, more integral relationships with inside the community. And so I've got some ideas. I'm gonna be pitching to see if you guys want to be part of it in February 12. Definitely, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:21

I'll be there. I'm sure about it. I love it, man. So I want to come back to sales and recruiting because again, things you're the master of. And I I do sales training for real estate investors. Um, the way we've got it formulated is I do a lot of like fractional work where I do call reviews for other people's teams, basically, right? Call reviews, KPI reviews, sales process audits, right? So for you, you're recruiting. Um when you're recruiting, we have to tell them it's commission only, right? A piece of that is you selling them into the dream of, hey, this is gonna work, right? You get certainty objections, people are scared about am I actually gonna get the outcome? How do you how do you have that conversation with people when you're recruiting them about how hey, you're not gonna have a salary, you don't have any guarantees. Yeah, right. That scares a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:01

Yeah. Well, for me, I introduce guys to the industry and allow them to do it on a part-time basis. Okay. So I don't want to.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:11

So they get they get uh their feet wet.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:12

They get their feet wet to see if they even like it. Okay. Right. Um, and and by the time we are able to meet and exceed their full-time income on a part-time basis, and they'll be able to save three, six months of of of expenses, then they have choices. Right? They they can bet on you, you want to invest in marketing, you want to invest in in branding yourself, you want to do that. But in the meantime, they've gotten confidence. So I don't get a guy from just day one to go 100% commission. Right. I let I let them kind of massage that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

Makes sense. Yeah. And then if especially if you know they're married, spouse spouses are, I feel like where when I've recruited, where a lot of the fears come from of like, hey, my husband or wife is is a little sketched out amount that's the commission role. But if you have foot in the door a little bit, yeah, that starts to make more sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:58

I'm glad you brought that up. And I'm and and before I'm even recruiting the husband or the wife, guess why I'm also recruiting the other spouse. That's that's brilliant. So for example, you know that like you sit down with them? Yeah, exactly. I got this tip from college coaches. Okay. Because college coaches just don't recruit the student, they recruit the mom.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Usually it's at the mom, right? Yeah. You'll see it too in uh in air, right? With uh the Michael Jordan, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:22

Good point. Yep. Good point. And so that that that conversation uh would involve what's your goals and dreams, what do you guys want to accomplish? You've been doing this for the last 10, 15, 20 years of your life. If you look back at your 10, 15, 20 years, you'll have what do you have to show for? Are you ahead? Are you behind? 95% of the time, they're behind. So if you continue this for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, something happened. Yeah. Is that where you want to be? If I could show you a way to shi shift and change all that by recalibrating, reinvest your time, by putting in order a chronology of what you need to spend time with to prioritize. Right. So I think a lot of people today, they're busy. They're busy, busy, busy, being busy. Just because you're busy doesn't mean you're active. Right. And all especially here in Frisco, all my kids are going pro. Sportsville, USA, right? Yeah. And so listen, man, I want to teach my kids not to go pro. I want to teach my kids how to be a leader in the community based on what you learned by playing sports. Then I want them to play team sports. Yeah. If he wants to go go boxing, wants to go UFC, great, but play a team sport. Yeah. Where it's not all about you.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:21

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:21

Because sometimes you do more for others than you will for yourself. So I'm when I'm recruiting, I'm just not recruiting the husband, I'm recruiting the wife. I'm just not recruiting the wife, I'm also recruiting the husband. Brilliant. And I'm also recruiting the kids. Because hey kids, you know, your mom and dad wants to do this, or your mom wants to do this. What's the last time you ever been to Disney World? You never been to Disney World? By the way, let's put a good, let's put a budget together. Your vacation by the freaking budget. Yeah. Crazy. Obscene. Crazy. What? Yeah. Right? And by the way, the kids will never, they don't remember it. You as a parent remember it. You remember as a parent, but your two-year-old ain't gonna remember it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:52

Yeah. You know? They'll drop five grand. I'm like, man, I gotta go to Costa Rica. I gotta let's go to Aruba. Like, what are we doing, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:58

By what's my that's my my six-year-old's favorite spot is Bahamas. Oh yeah? Where do you want to go? Is it Disney World? Yeah, I want to go to Bahamas. Best beach ever. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

You said twist my arm, right? Okay, let's go.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:10

We go there, we go we get a we got a house with a house or we can say one of our favorite resorts. They love it. They just love time, they love time, they don't like gifts, they like presents.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:19

You get it?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:20

Yeah, presents. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Smart. I like that a lot. I'm gonna steal that. We don't have kids yet, but hopefully in the near future.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:26

But you're building a lifestyle where when you do have kids, I'm gonna ask I ask myself, if I was to do it all over again, would I have kids in my 40s or my kids in my 20s? You know what I'd say? I had kids in my 40s.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:34

Really? Yeah, unpack that for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:36

Because uh the struggle that they faced, they the agony, the stress I put my kids under when I was broke when I was 20 years old. Let's go! You're relate, you make you relate. The stress I'm putting them under every day. I'm causing such anxiety, and I never get to really enjoy my kids. I haven't I have my six-year-old now, bro. Like my 15-year-old now, I've been able to enjoy these last two kids just immensely. Yeah. First three kids, I told I told them when they're when their youngest brother was born. I said, kids, listen, uh uh enjoy brother, smooches, smooches. Okay, that's your brand new brother. Okay, give them back to mom. Let's have a conversation downstairs. Go downstairs, you three, pay attention. Jojo, stand your iBad. See I don't want him having an itch butt running all the way. Look, you three. You were with your dad during a different phase of his life. Okay. Broken, busted, building this thing up. I was coming up. And you weren't you weren't able to enjoy some of the things that you now see your younger brothers to enjoy. Okay. But my my my my my my arrangement with you. Like they're big they got look, he's got an iPad. You guys never had an iPad. Right. You know, Joe Joe's gonna have this. You never had that stuff. My my arrangement with you, if you stay aligned with me, if you rock with the value, the values and principles of our family, if you honor the relationship we have together, understand I'm a father first, friend second, not the other way around. Yeah. I will fund and finance every idea and thought you have as long as you have a profitable business model and they want that you want to bring it up. Why do you know of the three older kids? Only one stuck on my up on it. Really? How's it going for them? Great. She's got her own, she's got her own uh uh uh esthetician business.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:08

Oh wow, it's a great business, especially nowadays. People are crushing with that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:12

Yeah, and I'm teaching them how how to recruit and her staff. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:16

What's your relationship like with those uh three eldest now?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:19

It's different because they're adult kids. Right. You know, they don't necessarily have to be around you, they have to want to be around you. Are they local or are they up to Chicago? They were what uh they were, but now they're one back to Chicago, one's in Denver. Okay. And uh, but you know, my my dream is to find a business, find a way for all of us to work together. But same as Jerry Jones. Yeah, and I think yeah, exactly. I think a lot of my my three older kids were working at it. I'm not I'm not a perfect dad by by any means. Uh there's a lot of mistakes I made, but I told them, listen, to make up for the some of the mistakes, not the fact that I I'm sorry, but I apologize. I just didn't have the the means or the the the bandwidth to handle being a single father in in my 20s and early 30s when you know you know I'd drop you off on Friday, you wouldn't see me on Sunday because I'm parting and then drop you off with my parents drop it off with a babysitter. I'm I'm I'm trying to figure out my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:05

But I think by the time you're late 30s, 40s, you have that rhythm in your life. Where now I used to say no to the kids a lot. Now it's yes a lot. But yes, I get it for you. But here's how you earn it. Yeah, makes sense. Right. For them, it's just like, but can I have it? Nah. So I was teaching my kids a negative financial framing because I was still going, I was still growing my day. Yeah, yeah. Because I was I was raising them with a language of broken ease. Right? It's a language I forgot how to speak. Yeah, I got correct. You're right. I hear it now, I know the language I used to speak it, but and I rebuke it. That's right. That's right. So that that's that's the relationship with the kids, and but the two younger kids, it's it's a much different relationship because the benefit of husband and wife together both raising the children, yeah, versus single parent households, two different mindsets, one's demonizing the other, yeah, right? Pitting the kids against each other. I you know, you know, and so I told my kids, I'm not gonna put your mother against you. I said, I think by the time you get older, you can figure out who's talking the truth. That makes sense. Yeah, and that's where we're that's right today.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:07

The humility that you had to have as a father to sit down and say, hey guys, your your brother's gonna have stuff that you you know, and and to own it, right? Hey, I was I was not the father that I wish I was, you know, 15 years ago. But I'm gonna do my best to make that right now, right? I mean, that takes a lot of humility, and I think the testament to your leadership.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:25

That's a that's a lesson I learned from Patrick. Any relationship you're getting involved in manage expectations. The reason why people get let down and get their butt hurt because unmet expectations. That's right. That makes sense. It's the same with your spouse, he right? That's right. A lot of fights are because of expectation differences. I told her, babe, listen, we get married because what happens? We got married, and then two days later, we're at the c with the PHP convention. Okay. Usually you have a honeymoon.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:49

Yeah. Was this one in Dubai or a different one? It's there is a different one. Okay. But that's that's the let's leading up to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:53

Okay, okay. I said, babe, listen, if you allow me to come to this company and we're we're gonna kick some tail, you know, my butt burned from what it just happened to us. I got this chip on my shoulders. Like, you couldn't believe I know we're not gonna have a honeymoon after we get married. We're just gonna do it right by God. We're gonna get married. We'll honor the marriage because we're living together now, which is honor that covenant. But I promise you, if you rock with me, you don't give me a hard time of coming home late, you're gonna, you know, I'm gonna hang hang with. But you allow me to do the work. I'm gonna give you a life that 10 men couldn't give you. Really? And we're gonna go on a honeymoon every year of our lives. Wow. Well, guess what's happened the last 13 years of our relationship? Honeymoon every year. Dubai, Costa Rica, Dubrovnik, Bahamas, Lit Croatia, Bahamas, you know, you know, every Dominican Republic. What's been your favorite? Our favorite has been, yeah, it's it's it's uh I think our favorite one is was Greece. Oh, okay. What about it? Santorini, okay, Greece, just seeing that because I'm a big, you know, uh a Roman Empire. Ah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:49

Sparta. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, so I want to come back then. I mean, that's that's uh managing expectations is a great leadership principle when you're talking about duplication in your leadership. Because we mentioned it, I want to hone in on it for a little bit because I think this is where the real money is. Um, for me, I've never had a team bigger than 10.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:12

So this is the skill that I'm really trying to hone in is that duplication of leadership right now. I've I've done things to up-level my existing staff. I um, you know, frequently tell them, hey, ownership is on you and they step it up. But I think I have so much to learn in this department, which is why I'm grateful to be around people like you. Talk to me about the biggest lessons you learned in how duplication actually happens and how you can do that in the sales domain, especially. I mean, 5,000 agents, man, it's not like you're talking to them every day.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:39

Yeah. Um, easy way to uh uh systematize is franchise it. Franchise it. But that costs a lot of money. So the average person I'm recruiter, I could come up with money for franchising. Okay. So our compensation system is what helps me duplicate leadership. Okay. Because our it's a little bit of a network marketing style, direct sales type of compensation where there's an incentive to recruit and train and build a team. Right. And for the team to want to stick with you long term, right? Because people will be inside your organization that's gonna stick with you for the long term. And interesting, I say that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:06

Why do you think that gets such a bad rap? I feel like, I mean, there's some I've heard of other companies that aren't PHP, they get a really bad rap when they do stuff. But why why do you think there's such a stigma on that?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:16

I I I don't know because I never got involved in like an Amway or or Herbalife, something like that. Yeah, I've never gotten my and and part of an enrollment, you know, we don't make money on the enrollment fee, which is 199 bucks. It's a very de minimis amount of money. And and and there's no compensation for us on that 199. Right. If I get recruited into all these traditional network marketing companies, they're a thousand, two thousand bucks, and they get a commission from that enrollment. I didn't know that. Uh so there's there's that makes a little more sense now. Yeah. So for us, the only way we make any money by recruiting anybody is we got to get them licensed, get them developed so there for this. So they're actually selling policies. Just like any other traditional organization out there, right? Just like any real estate or uh office or any law firm, right? The only way they make money is by having a junior associate go out there, find the deals, work the deals, so therefore the senior partners can make make a cut and they can offer partnerships along the way. Makes sense. So our compensation system is very helped out, very much helped out by that type of comp that type of uh compensation role. Okay. Because guys, for example, my biggest commission contract when I was insurance agent was 140%. Okay, wow. So so let's like the annual policy. So you get commission 140%. And the most amount of money we made is is is 350. Yep. I'm at 75% now. Interesting. But my passive income is $2 million a year.

unknown 1:24:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:33

Right? And and this is just one business I have. Right. Because now that we got this, we got whiskey company, we got real estate, right? So we add it all together, it's it stacks up. But primarily it was built through my insurance cash flow. And once that insurance cash was started getting killed in taxes, right? And then I get taxed on here, but well, own this Bitcoin money, and all these different things. Like so we started diversifying our money into other you know areas that built up the cash flow, that built up our overall cash flow combined together, yeah, which now allows us to live the life we live. But it's based on the the first that's why I think a lot of guys they diversify multiple streams of income too fast. Yeah, focus on one thing, get to seven figures of income. Yeah, therefore, you can reinvest the profits into something because you can have to, otherwise you're gonna get crut, you're gonna get crushed in taxes. That makes sense. But from a leadership development standpoint, yeah, it's gonna come back. It's gotta come back to systimatic systematic uh systematizing your your your your your model. It's gotta be simple, simple, it's gotta be duplicatable. Okay. Number three, you gotta recruit the right character people through the quantity, you're gonna find the quality.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:36

Right. And for me, if you notice my organization, 95% of the guys we're recruiting that are top of top of our income are married couples. Married couples, okay. Very rarely will you have singles in there. And by the way, I was single when I was first building this. But I wasn't a distracted single.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:52

A lot of singles out there, bleeding hearts, and we're looking for old mass.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:55

But you also mentioned your wife's a multiplier. That's right. Even though you were successful, it was still multiplication with her. That's right. Why do you think that is? Why do you think married couples make more money?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:03

Because they're not thinking necessarily just by themselves. Yeah. Versus a single person, they just think about themselves. Of course. A married person, you just think about their wife, their husband, they're thinking about their kids. They're thinking of a purpose greater than them. Yeah. I gotta take care of my family. I'm not living the life I want to live. I'm working for this job. Job sucks. I'm overworked, underpaid. Let me try this. Hey, we just made more money in this thing than we did my full-time job. And we're trying, you know, we're going on vacation all over the damn world now. Yeah. My job, even if we did it for another 10 years. Right. So now the spouses are involved. Oh, how do how do you get more? And they're unified on that opportunity, baked in with a vision of building leaders that build leaders, right? Right. And and and seeing the problems that we have in America. For example, nine million, according to Forbes, nine million people today have to have a second job.

unknown 1:26:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:48

Nine million people.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:49

When you say second job, you mean like even the gig economy, or what exactly do you mean?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:52

Not even, yeah, not even a gig. Like they have a like some people can't even afford a gig economy. They just gotta have a second job because they can't afford nine million people in America. You're kidding. Right? They have to have, and by the way, the gig economy, that's going away because of AI.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:06

You know, and we're here in Frisco, you know, we're here in Frisco, bro, and uh, I ordered DoorDash and it said, Do you want drone delivery? I'm like, what? Really? This is a joke, and yeah, sure enough, they say my bigger Did you click the drug delivery?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:17

Yeah, right. Ben, get the camera.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:19

Yeah, that's what happened, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:21

I was like, no hitting.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:25

They just, they just they just uh you know, just did just drop my food. Wow. I picked up in the backyard and uh no tip.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:32

This is this they'll still ask though, I bet. Yeah, yeah, they'll still ask for the tip. But uh so I want to drill down on systemization because you mentioned it. I think a lot of entrepreneurs know that they need systemizationization to, yeah, you know what I'm trying to say here, right? But really struggle from like the zero to one and the one to ten, right? Like, how do I actually put all this on paper and then how do I implement it so that we're actually managing to the system? Because those are all different skill sets. Yeah. Right? Help me understand that. You got to take the time to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:05

Okay. What makes your effort equal a result? It could be an operational role, it could be a revenue generated role. It could be a leadership development role, but they got to be systematized. And you got to take the time to do it. That's why we do leadership retreats once a year. You take our guys. Yeah, we take our guys. How do you qualify for a leadership? Yeah, you got to have a certain quota in your business. Okay. You can't pay your way to get in there. That's good. Right? You got you got to show that you're a serious business person, that you just don't pay to play. You show it because now I got that whole room, room full of guys that are of that minimum uh production requirement. Because you're all growing together. Even if I like you, even though I like you, I like you, but you're not doing anything with this quota. Yeah, you can't be in this proximity. Yeah. Because not only will you not resident with what we're talking about, but my guy's like, bro, this guy ain't for four. Why is he here? Yeah. They're gonna look at that. So I gotta protect that environment, right? Because only when um a uh uh a level of proximity is of standards is there, that's only when a transformation can start to become become a reality. Okay. Because guys are starting to play there. Everybody's like, oh, I thought I was the top guy in my office, but I'm not everybody's doing it too as well across the company. And they're they're in that room. So uh you guys sit down, kind of look at our processes and improve on it. It's not gonna be perfect the the first year you do it, the first quarter you do it, but it's at least it's a a starting one. And here's what I love too as well. We're plugging, we're plugging. I can't believe how much this 20 bucks a month is our favorite 20 bucks a month of Chat GBT.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:29

Oh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:30

So two things we're using. We're using ChatGBT, we're using Perplexity. Oh yeah, we use both, yeah. Yeah, perplexity can get deeper research. Right. Right? It'll dig deeper into what's what's out there, and then it kicks it back, and then we feed that back into Chat GBT, and ChatGBT can clean it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:44

So, Matt, let's let's drill down. Sure. I want to continue talking about both uh the standardization of sales and how we actually implement and manage to that, right? Because I think there's the creation, which like you had just said, takes time. You gotta sit down, you gotta do it, you gotta figure out where operations makes money. How do we manage to it though, man? Like it's one thing to have the manual, it's another thing for people to use it.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:05

Yeah, so so everybody's got to be tied into a leader's bulletin. A leader's bulletin, right? So everybody's gotta know what everybody's doing. And our leaders bulletin updates 35,000 times a day. So basically is real time. Okay. We we and uh we had invested uh a million dollars into creating our software called Bamboo. Uh when Patrick raised uh uh uh 10 million bucks um from uh Oscar de la Hoya's team. Oh yeah. Yeah, and and then so he took portion of that, two two things. Portion of that you we invest into FinTech, financial technology, okay, which is uh the way we operate internally within our business, a portion of it had to do with our leaders bulletin. So everybody that comes into our company, um, you'll see your numbers for the history of your entire career. From day one, your your your production numbers, your cash flow numbers, year over year. There's reporting in there. Did you improve uh from this February to from last uh February compared to February before? Are you an uptick in your business? Uh we even drilled it down. How many people in your in your agency are actually active writing agents uh compared to this time last month, compared to this time last quarter? Right. So we have a lot of those reporting with inside our software. Yeah. So then when we have our leadership meetings, listen, bro, listen, you know, we we got these goals, we want to grow the company X amount of uh percent, but you actually didn't grow. You actually are in negative 10%.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:23

So other guys in a company have to pull your weight.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:26

Oh, that stings, man. That stings. You don't want to hear that.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:31

Give me a phone, right? Yeah, so now now there's now there's posit the like we always think about peer pressure as negative. Well, this is also positive peer pressure. That's great, yeah. Right? And so uh, for example, we've got we've got $12 million in bonuses this year.

unknown 1:31:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:47

If we grow X amount of percent, $12 million of bonuses are sent to our guys. The key leaders have built it, right? And so you're holding each other accountable to get those bonuses paid, right? That's right. Well, bro, wouldn't you? Rising tide lift all boats. And so in that environment, too, right? But in addition to the logic and the numbers, there has to be an open dialogue of a call-out culture. That makes sense. That it's respectful. We I call it call each other with facts, with class, and mutual respect.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:14

Talking through what does a conversation like that sound like? Let's say I'm underperforming and and you need to call me out.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:18

Hey, listen, Jay, uh, Ajay, I noticed your numbers here from last month, this month have not grown. And this body is in front of everybody, it's not grown. Uh, how how do you feel about not adding to the positive growth of the company? Gosh, man, I I guess I didn't realize I wasn't adding to the growth. I don't feel good. I mean, by the way, do you care? I mean, you don't have to though, because you reached your financial goals, which is fine. You got a lifestyle, you got you got places where you're you're taking your family. So between you and your wife, you're good, bro. You don't have to grow. I mean, do you want to be participating in this in the future growth of what we're doing and the things we accomplish in business today? Do you care to be part of that? You be careful uh part of that movement.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:54

I mean, yeah, man. I mean, we're we're definitely comfortable, but Matt, like I'm I'm here, I'm with you guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:59

So here's the areas here uh that I think we need improvement. So this number here needs to improve. How can how can we help you in that area? Okay, is there a skill, is there a system, is there a leak in your in your process right now? Let me let me hear your last phone. Let me hear your last five phone calls.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:15

It's good. We just jump right into it.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:17

Yeah, yeah. Right? Right? This is this is happening in front of everybody, but I think what you need to do with your organization, you guys need to get tighter product training here. You gotta need tighter script training here. Um, how's your tennis looking like at your weekly workshops? Is it uh higher or is it lower? This is lower, yeah. So what do you got to do in the meantime? What are you doing on social media? How are you promoting yourself? Are you out there shaking hands?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:36

Help me understand why do you uh why do you do that publicly versus privately? Um because I know there's different leadership philosophies. Because it's a leadership meeting. Oh, it's a leader. Okay, so so most of the leaders, yeah, not people understand. No, not the right. That makes that makes a lot more sense. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:49

It's funny that you asked that because when I do show, for example, one of the cash flows I do show public is cash flow. Here's what everybody's making.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:58

Right, right, right. That's crazy, huh? Chris, how would you feel about a board of uh cash flow? You know, we put you on blast.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:06

And if you thought this was one of those things, uh let me just dispel this right now. Wow, you can make money here.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:11

And ideally, you set that expectation on the front end, though, right? So anybody that's joining your office knows that's the culture.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:15

Yeah, we're making money here. Here are the people that's not making money here. Wow, right? And the the money I'm showing is my part-timers. Part-timers. Because sometimes my part-timers make more money than my full-time number. You're kidding. And then they got no excuse. No excuse, bro. Wow, but I don't show the full-timers' numbers. Why? Because I need them to save face. That makes sense. I don't want them to say, hey, bro, the next management. How can so-and-so part-time is making more money than you, bro? I don't want to create another uh um negative jab, you know, because they they they they they're they're bought in. They've never done two, three, four, five years. They just got a lucky last 90 days. That's true. So I can't celebrate this guy more than the guys that have been with one, two years. So I can't do that publicly amongst the rank and file. Okay. I can say that though, in a leadership meeting.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:06

Yeah, that makes sense because it's peer-to-peer. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So, Matt, I want to ask you for some industry specific advice because I know you've mentored people in all businesses outside of financial services as well. Um, I'm sure you've got buddies that are roofers, solar. You obviously know tons of people in real estate like myself. A problem we struggle with is inconsistent cash conversion, right? So, like you guys sell a policy, how soon after do you get paid? Uh a week. A week. Okay, so that's super fast, right? I mean, sure, there might be a little bit faster out there in the world, but a week is fantastic. Um, for us in real estate, man, if I'm on the phones and I lock up a contract or a partial interest, it could be 45 days, it could be 90 days before I get paid. That's slow, man. I got bills to pay every single month, right? Yep. So as I'm building a business and I'm recruiting, especially, like, what do you recommend from a compensation structure perspective? Like, do you see guys that are doing draws in industries with slower cash conversions, like the roofing, like the solar, like real estate? Do you see them supplement with faster cash conversions? I've seen some wholesalers also have their guys sell financial services to supplement. So you have both. What are you seeing in the world right now? Because you got a big network, man, and it's 2026. We've done both.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:13

Okay. Okay, so we've done draw. The challenge with draw is people are gonna tell what they want to tell you just to get the draw and out. It's true. Right? And now they just took me for 10 grand. That's right. So even though it's longer uptick and you might have more tur uh turnover, for us was always worked out just 100% commission from straight away and just managing expectations. That's a full-time job, and and this is what they're gonna do part-time. Then the trade-off is you just have to be better at recruiting and training. Yeah, and then on top of that, too, a lot of people just haven't expanded their bandwidth. Okay. Well, tell me, listen, bro, there's 168 hours a week. Okay, let's say you're part-time. You got 40 hours at your job. We'll give you another, you know, uh uh eight hours of sleep every day. We'll give you uh an hour of commute time, two hours of community time. Okay. So okay, now what? You still got 110 hours. What are we doing? What are we doing? Let me let me see your let me see your phone. What are you what's your screen? What's your screen, your screen thing telling you? I'm just have this is a reflection. This is not me calling you out. This is your data. Yeah. What websites are you on? Ah, what's that website for, bro? So are you are you sure you're not working? You're not you're doing the business, but you're not really focused in on the business. That makes sense. Right. Uh I remember there's one guy, every he's got all my training videos. He had a beautiful manual. He he uh transcribed everything, highlighted tabs, everything. Awesome, bro. You you made a manual out of my videos. Cool, on how to prospect and and how to go sell. Awesome. How many phone calls have you made? None. So but he's back there diligent. Sometimes there's also call reluctance. Yeah. And that's why we have an hour every m every week dedicated to help people come in. We call it phone zone. Everyone come in, everybody come in. We are everybody come in. Okay, we're part-time full time. Everybody can in the full time, you got to set the example. Of course, right? Here's how I make phone calls, so therefore we give confidence through repetition. Fantastic, right? So I'm on the phone with the guys. Yep. Me, I'm the guy. I've seen videos you post online, man. You're still hitting the phones. All day. It's not for me. It the benefit is leadership development. Of course. Because some things aren't taught. Yeah, some things are caught for sure. And I but by be doing it for them with them until they can get it done, then that's when the leadership development has a chance to start maturing.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:23

Yeah. So you see some bad apples in your industry that do a lot of like, hey man, buy these $1 leads in bulk, right? You guys do a lot of word of mouth and a lot of word of mouth. How does that work? How if I come in as a new new agent, like how am I getting leads? Who am I calling?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:37

Yeah. I mean, it's it's everybody from a nine-day-year-old baby to a nine-year-old great-grandmother, assuming that they're healthy, uh-huh, he's your potential customer. Okay. So there's a massive bandwidth. That makes sense. And there's a hundred million people in America underinsured, where undermen are insured by 100,000 agents. And it's still growing. It's growing a more multicultural type of uh agent base. Okay. So us is just equipping people of how to establish conversations in a niche or a category or a career or an interest that they already have a natural desire with. That's why I like cigars well than whiskey. Because I come over here, I can just establish a simple conversation with guys. Hey, bro, what are you smoking? Have you tried this cigar? Have you tried it with paired to with this whiskey? What do you do? So the guard is already down. Right. I've been smoking cigars since I was in the Marine Corps. It's always been an area of just relaxation. It's like uh Steve Harvey calls it yoga. It's his yoga, right? And if you if you see the whole history of how cigar smoking got started by the Tainos and the Caribbean Islands, and I had to build a relationship with the Spanish and Portugal, you know, uh tradesmen and sailors, you see what the cigar community does. That can be something different. You could be a fitness influencer, sure, right? And you love fitness stuff, and go to the gym, work out, cycle class, yoga class, you know, whatever class, get to know the instructor, get to know the influencer, get build a relationship with them. You go to a networking event, don't just meet the rank and file, meet the organizer, understand what they organized. That's not what they do full-time. They're just doing this as they're just organizing this event. Yeah. Right? So get to know the organizer. You get on their radar. For example, yesterday I'm at the speakers' conference right here at the uh PGA uh uh uh a deal, and that day, yesterday, I'm a student because I'm still working on my public speaker.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:17

Yeah. That is that Paul uh what's it? Paul Getty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get the ads.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:21

And so so I'm there, I bought a couple tickets for my guys. Nice, and I'm there. So they see that I'm a student too. Right? And they see a bunch of people in the crowd. Hey, money smoking, the cigar event. Like one of the guys is training. Man, this guy runs some killer events, you know. So shout shout out to Brian, right? And so they started promoting my event based on the consistent I am, shaking hands, being people, being what I call it being a mayor of your city. Yeah, you know, be a mayor of your community. Big city, but small community. It's a community you can be part of. You want to talk to Filipinos, you want to talk to Indian, you want to talk to whoever. Yeah, whoever you're naturally vibed with, right? Start in that niche. You want to deal with veterans, you want to deal with former professional athletes, work that vibe. You want to work with teachers, work that vibe because you know their issues already. Start starting bailing bailing a clientele. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:08

Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Now, Matt, you've seen a lot of people come through your ecosystem that have talked a big game and then not done anything, right? And then you've also seen people that are probably very humble and end up being top performers, right? What are the patterns that you've identified on both ends of that? When I'm when I'm looking out and meeting people, how do I know this guy's gonna be a dud versus this guy's gonna be a killer? What patterns have you seen?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:33

I love cocky, confident people. Just not arrogant.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:39

Just not arrogant. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:42

I love that. What's the difference? Uh arrogant. I can't, I know every nobody can be like me, or I don't gotta do what you do, or I don't gotta humble myself. I've noticed my my cup, my cup is full.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:54

Like for me, I'm I'm at the speakers event, and my guys are telling me, Matt, thank you for bringing us here, but we talk about this stuff in a week. We make good now. They got perspective. Yeah, that's true. They have perspective. Hey guys, this is world class what we're doing. Yeah, exactly. Right. But you're not paying 200 bucks to be in this class. Right. This is part of the membership of being part of our ecosystem at our local office, local offices across the country. Yeah. Uh, but I've noticed the people that have that have low skill but high character. I love those guys. Low skill. Because I can always I can I can always teach the skill.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:26

Definitely.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:26

And the character of consistency, the character of uh of being uh humble, the character of wanting to recreate yourself, and then you get to the next level and still have the humility to recreate yourself. Yeah. Because once they reach the top of the current level, guess what? They introduce it to themselves simultaneously. Yeah. The bottom of the next level. It's true. There's a humility there. And I believe in always getting to the next level. What's your next? What's your next? What's your next? Even if you make $10 million, $20 million, a billion dollars. Because I believe that there's a responsibility when you teach uh when you attain a certain level to not only to be an example, but to teach it to others. Yeah. Once you find a way to clear the path, you gotta look back and say, hey guys, here we go. This is where you got this is where you gotta go. There's that leadership development there. That's why entrepreneurs are heroes in our communities. Yeah. Because they're they're they're they're clearing the path for a lot of people there that uh otherwise uh have lost a lot of hope in what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:16

Yeah, that makes sense. So as you're meeting people, just to drill down one layer deeper, uh you mentioned a couple of character traits there. Consistency. Um I'm trying to remember the other ones off the top of my head. There was consistency, uh humility, humility, right? How are you identifying those traits as you're having your first couple initial conversations? Is it body language? Is it what they're speaking? Like what are you seeing there?

SPEAKER_03 1:43:39

Like you, like I sense a certain amount of hunger with you at the age that you're at. It's a it's a very attractive quality. Thank you. The way you rip this interview, it's a very attractive quality. I mean, I can't think that if I was your age, that I'd be asking these type of questions. So it shows me your level of personal development when the cameras are off. I'm pretty sure there's been some late nights there with you, right? Pretty sure there's been some early mornings, right? Definitely. It shows. And for a lot of guys, for example, one of my guys told me I do this full time. I said, Are you sure you do this full time, bro? You know, Michelle, you have been full-time for a year. Get a job.

unknown 1:44:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:13

Well, yeah, get a job. I don't stubborn. How are you broke and stubborn? I don't get it, bro. And you call yourself the man. Listen, I'm gonna man check you right now if if I if you allow me to. Yeah. And by the way, notice what I just said. If you allow me to. Yeah, permission-based question. Can I give you some feedback?

SPEAKER_01 1:44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:33

Are you sure? It's gonna sting. But I don't know who's telling you this. That's the expectation, that's good. That's right. Because I'm just on mono on mono, provider to provider, protector to protector. A man is responsible for his home. Are you sure you're full-time? Or are you leaning too much on your wife? Because you said you want to do this. How do you, bro, how do you ever lean on your wife like that? And you look yourself in the mirror. You're well, you're well put together, got your hair done. Whose budget generated the money for you to go get well put together? Your wife? Am I a bro? Yeah. Are you serious? Okay, can we can we reframe? Can we reset you for 2026? Like it'd be that type that type of conversation. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. But that's that's gotta be otherwise I'm disserving you by not addressing it. Right. You know, otherwise you're just thinking you're on your way out, and then and just because it don't work out here, people think, well, I'm just gonna quit and go to a different company. It can be like they got liens there, they got there. Bro, you go where you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:31

You are who you are, wherever you are. That's true. So you have to be a person that says, listen, man, okay, I I have a combination of compensation, I got a combination of culture, I got a combination of mentorship, I got a combination of accountability. Wow, I just gotta be disciplined. That's what I gotta bring to the table and run and run the model. How do you learn discipline? Um, how do we learn discipline in the Marines? You learn it in groups. Okay. Because out individually, if you told me to run three miles, I ain't doing it. Longest freaking run ever. Right? But if I got a battle buddy, yeah. If I got a running buddy. Remember one of my topics uh at the end of last year was how to pick your running buddy? Yes. That's it. You gotta you gotta find a running buddy. I always I always say there's three people that you have to have mentor you in your life. Number one, you gotta have somebody pulling you up, right? To me, that's been Patrick. Yep, right? Thank God. And he pulls me up in many different areas, yeah. Right? Second, you gotta co-mentor each other. Yeah, right? That's your running buddy. Yep. And the third person, you gotta be pulling up pulling somebody up because you gotta be able to teach what you're learning. Yeah. Right? That's why it's called currency, because it flows. There you go. There you go. So what you learn, you're a conduit to it, too. And then the person, think about this too, bro. Who learns the most between these two people, the student or the teacher? Who ends up mastering the subject, the teacher or the student?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:52

Who ends up and now I'm scared to now I'm scared to I I know in my own life, as I've taught, I learned a ton along the way. Because you have to be able to package up the information in a way that an umbrella of people can learn it, right? I gotta be able to speak the language of many in order to teach.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:10

And you want the responsibility of teaching because that response means you gotta be prepared. I was interviewing Coach Kate. Oh, Coach Rosses. Yeah, yeah. And says Sepala, one of the things that we told everybody uh at Duke is that if you want to win, you have to be worthy of winning. Are you worthy of winning? By preparing. If you don't prepare, you're not worthy of winning. It's fair. You can't say I'm I'm pissed off I lost. Bro, you weren't worthy of winning anyway. Right. Because you didn't prepare. Right. You know, study the tape, you know, study your your notes, you didn't practice, you were chilling, whatever you were doing, you didn't put 100% in, you weren't worthy of winning. Yeah. But if you were putting in the work, you're worthy of winning. You lost, now you know the areas where you need to improve it. Everybody, every winner will go through a series of losses before they can turn those losses, those failures into wins.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:59

That's fantastic, man. This has been a lot of lessons. As we as we close out, I want to pivot into your books here. Um, and you know, you're somebody that's a cash flow millionaire, made millions of dollars, participated in some version of this, you know, multiple nine-figure exit with PHP, right? Yep. And now you're giving back through these books. Why?

SPEAKER_03 1:48:19

Uh I uh interviewed one year a Jewish um Jewish uh entrepreneur in Chicago, and Patrick, it's funny he got the same feedback for somebody interviewed as Jewish in LA.

unknown 1:48:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:31

I think it might be a Jewish thing. Okay. He said, in your entire life, you want to have a son, okay, you want to plant a tree, okay, and you want to write a book. Okay. All these three things have to do with your legacy and what you leave behind. That's beautiful. Right? What you do, what you do, right? You you you're known for what you do, but your legacy is the difference you make long after you're gone. Right. So when you're doing these videos, YouTube, social media, think about this, bro. All the people that have ever passed away. Okay, Lord, before you take me home, I need to delete my social media accounts. Can I do that real quick? No, they're left online.

unknown 1:49:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:09

Like we're creating a virtual time capsule. That's true. Like, like this right here, when you have a kid one day, yeah, and they're gonna look at this conversation. This is what my dad looked like in his 20s. Wow, he was asking these type of questions. Yeah, he was that insightful. He he was he was participating in these type of events, this is the type of business he built. Why? Because you care to document it and put it online. And not only will your kids have it, your grandkids will have it. Only takes one person is a famous bloodline to change that bloodline forever. Amen. And then right now you're showing that to be you. Yeah. And for many people watching this, for many people considering the journey of entrepreneurship, which I consider some of the best heroes in the world, because all all heroes don't wear capes, bro.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:51

You know, the the all all the heroes I know are making calls when nobody's picking up, are sticking around when the business plan is failed and recreating themselves. And they stick it out long enough for it to finally exponentially grow and manifest into some form of success. They just take that to the they take that to the next level. But that that's the reason why I'm writing these books. I what I wanted to write my first book in 08-09. Oh wow. And it was only my first eight, nine years in the business. It was a financial book. Okay. And I told myself, pause. Pause. I had a check in the spirit. Pause. What you're doing today is still a theory. There's index universal life policies, there's index annuities, your five gotchas of money. It's still a it sounds good, but still a theory. But you needed to see it play out people's lives. Wow. And so my second book, my first book, Faith Made Millionaire, was really my journey. My second book, one of my favorites, is my presentation. So if I'm teaching somebody how to talk to clients about retirement planning and playing ahead, it's the five gotchas of money book. My whole presentation of how I recruited my uh my my now wife that I was doing and how we helped 225,000 clients in the last 10 years. Is that book? Gotcha. Because I use that book to systematize. Yeah. Right? So even if you're not an agent of mine, but you're a client, you'll understand it. Yeah. And we got QR codes there, videos. I have my YouTube channel people can go back to and reference. But that book there, I've been doing that presentation since 07. 20 years now. Almost 19 years now, I've been doing the same presentation, put in the book, because it's now been stress tested. It's been through the 01.com bubble. It's been through the Great Recession. It's been through the pandemic. It's been through tariffs, Trump, Biden, Republicans, Democrats, both equals. Stress tests. So now this is a self-evident book. To truth. Right? Same thing to keep the keys. These are financial trade we use for homeowners and real estate investors. They need to invoke to maintain liquidity. It's nothing to be liquid. Yeah. So we're teaching liquidity with real estate investors, with homeowners. And even if you are a renter, how do I position my mentality? Because now when you own something, you're just not paying something. Oh, something breaks. There's a responsibility. Yeah, it takes up brand space too. Yeah. Because what do we what do we generally take care of? Things that we rent or things that we own? Oh. Where are the safer neighborhoods? The neighborhoods where there's more renters or the neighborhoods where there's more owners. Owners. Yeah. Uh businesses where people can have a rental type of business or a place where I can own something like a bank or real estate company, insurance company versus, you know, you know, a chicken spot, paycheck, paycheck, cashing station, a liquor store.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:21

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:22

Those are renter type purchases, ownership type purchases. That's where there's a difference in community. I wish I could say will ever heal and fix the poor. Even the Bible says always amongst you will be the poor. Because again, having wealth, having money is not necessarily a state of bank accounts, a state of mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:39

That's fantastic. Man, this has been such a valuable interview, and I appreciate you giving us so much time here this evening. Do you have any last words of wisdom for the audience as we close out here?

SPEAKER_03 1:52:49

I would say, especially those in in Dallas, you know, uh a couple days ago, Trump said in New York, you just did a very bad move by allowing Wall Street to move to Dallas. Y'all street. I'm excited about Dallas. I'm excited about the opportunity. I never thought that Dallas would turn out to be the city that's becoming. Um, but a large part about wealth building is anticipation. If you want to become wealthy, you want to find ways to find your niche, find a trend, get in front of it, start building infrastructure so therefore when the wave comes in, you got an infrastructure to catch it. But at the same time, you can either be at the wave with a fishing pole or you can have a dam. Right. Right. So you can get that business your way. And it happened with the baby boomers, with the real estate business, with with the the Ford Mustang, with real estate and now financial services. And we see that happening right now. And so many industries are being changed with AI. So right now you got to find a trend, get in front of it, build infrastructure, build relationships, get in front of it, so therefore you can catch the opportunity instead of just reaching out to it. So good. How can people who are uh interested in working with you reach out to you? Moneysmartguy.com, anywhere, money smart guy on Instagram, money smart guy on Facebook, Money Smart Guy. If uh you don't know how to spell that, don't bother calling me. That was fantastic, Matt. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Thank you, bud.