EXECUTIVE TLDR
Your next level is one decision away
Build distribution first, products second
Learn the invite and KTA numbers
Get a securities license to unlock income
Move from struggling to survival to winning
3 people at $3K/month = $100K/year
8 people at $100K/year = $1M/year
Believe bigger than your current results
VIDEO SUMMARY
In this high-energy closing message, Joseph Cardino challenges the audience to raise their belief level and understand how growth really happens inside Primerica.
He opens by sharing that his hierarchy produced over $16 million in investments in six months — but it didn’t start that way. His first securities sale was $25 per month. After driving hours and calculating the tiny commission, it barely covered tolls. But he stayed consistent, built relationships, and years later that same client invested $180,000 — turning a small start into thousands of dollars in income.
His lesson: don’t focus on immediate income. Focus on outcomes and building clients over time.
While securities create explosive income, Cardino makes it clear that none of it would have happened if he didn’t build distribution first. Early in his career, income came almost entirely from life insurance. Over time, securities grew to represent 60% of his earnings — but only because a large team was built underneath.
He explains the four stages of growth in Primerica:
The Struggling Stage — 3–5 directs, 3–15 teammates, doing most of the work, earning $500–$3,000 per month. Here you learn the numbers:
10 invites = 4 guests = 1 recruit.
8 KTAs = 5 FNAs = 3 life apps = 1 IBA.
The Survival Stage — 5–10 directs, 15–30 teammates, $6K–$15K team premium, earning $3K–$8K per month. Some teammates begin producing independently.
The Winning Stage — 10–20 directs, 30–60 teammates, $15K–$50K premium, earning $8K–$25K per month. Competing nationally. Recognized company-wide.
The Freedom Stage — 25+ directs, 100+ teammates, $100K+ team premium. Rarely writing personal business. Winning contests consistently. National visibility.
The formula is simple duplication:
Get to a level.
Help three people get there.
Repeat.
Cardino then breaks down his compensation math:
3 people earning $3,000/month = $100,000/year
8 people earning $100,000/year = $1,000,000/year
With over 160 people in the company earning more than $1 million annually, he emphasizes that belief is the real barrier.
He closes with a powerful message: success in Primerica isn’t about background, education, age, or experience. Everyone gets a jersey. The field is open. The only question is whether you’ll step up and talk to people.
Your next level isn’t years away.
It’s one decision away.
FAQS
What is the main message of this talk?
Your income and growth are determined by belief, duplication, and making the decision to build.
Why is securities licensing important?
It creates large income spikes and long-term wealth through investments.
What are the four stages of growth?
Struggling, Survival, Winning, and Freedom — each defined by directs, premium, and income levels.
What is the 3×3 formula?
Three people earning $3,000 per month creates a six-figure annual income.
How do you make $1 million per year?
Develop eight people earning $100,000 per year.
What numbers matter most early on?
10 invites = 4 guests = 1 recruit.
8 KTAs = 5 FNAs = 3 life apps = 1 IBA.
What is the real barrier to success?
Belief and the decision to act consistently.
GLOSSARY
Directs – Personally recruited team members who actively show up and build.
KTA (Kitchen Table Appointment) – A scheduled appointment to complete a financial review.
FNA (Financial Needs Analysis) – A structured financial review used to determine coverage and investment needs.
IBA (Independent Business Application) – The enrollment application to join the business.
Division Leader 5×5 – A production benchmark (5 recruits, $5,000 premium) tied to income growth.
Distribution System – A recruiting-based model where income expands through duplication.
Freedom Stage – The level where leaders earn primarily from team production rather than personal sales.
Video Summary
00:00
You know, I’m going to talk a little bit now to wrap this thing up. I. In preparing for the. The. The school, I run a bunch of reports, and one of the reports showed that our hierarchy in the last six months did over $16 million of investments. It’s 2.8 million a year. A month. A month. Something like that. 2.8amonth. And that’s not cause of me. I barely did a million. It’s cause we have a team of incredible regional vice presidents. A lot of them got recognized. Pat, Steve, Maggie Nalita and others. We have unbelievable people in our base shop who do big production, whether It’s Gary Marcus, S.B. DeVacaro, Naomi Corbo, Nick Pasion. Nick made 23 grand last month. He’s 74 years old, retired, fighting cancer. I called him. I go, how the hell did you do that?
00:49
He goes, I don’t even know you have a security license. You can make a lot of money. But it wasn’t always like that, okay? I’m just letting you know. It wasn’t like. I remember my first security sale. I got a referral from a friend of mine. He goes, hey, my buddy from work needs an ira. And I said, okay, great. Where does he live? Mount Vernon. Now, if you live in Long island, you gotta go to Mount Vernon. It’s a couple hours. I know back then maybe 20, $30 in tolls and gas and stuff like that, but I was so excited, man. I rode up there and I sat down. Let’s just say his name is Jack Powell to make up a name for him. I sit down with Jack, and I sit down. He goes, yeah, man, I’m ready to invest.
01:23
I go, what are we talking about? He goes, I don’t like 25 bucks a month. Now, I was pumped up because I never really wrote. Like, I got. I wrote my own when I got my license, but I was pumped up because I was actually going to have a client. It was my first client, right? So I write thing for 25 bucks. Then I get in the car and I’m feeling badass. Yeah, I’m a financial advisor. I close life insurer. I close investments, right? I’m driving home. Then I started figuring out how much I would make. I was like a district or a division. I was like, $25 this and that business. I get like 12 cents a month. I’m like, it’s going to take me 26 years just to get the toll money back. I go to securities.
02:07
Thing is crazy, but Joe Wentzer, back then, he said, listen, don’t worry about the income, worry about the outcome. He said, just develop clients, accumulate the clients. So Jack started off with $25 a month. He got a raise four months later. He called me up. We bumped it up to 150amonth. As a matter of fact, I said, you know what? It’s 2000 a year. You’re allowed to put in that IRA. Why don’t we do it 166.66. He goes, I’m in. So now we bumped it 166.66. I didn’t have to drive there to do it. We did it over the phone. And six months later, he got married. He called up, he said, listen, I need life insurance for my wife and me now that I’m married, and can she have a Roth IRA, too? Could I have a different investment?
02:50
Because now I’m making more money at work. So I wrote the life insurance on both of them. I increased their monthly packs. They did. And I really kind of lost touch with them for three or four years. You know, I wasn’t. I was horrible with follow up with my clients, because my whole focus was I got to build the business. This is what I got to do in between while I’m recruiting and getting people licensed. So I. In the first 15, 20 years of my business, I had like, zero follow up with clients. Great follow up with recruits and teammates. Zero with clients. I think it was six or seven years later, all of a sudden, I look at my daily blast report. There was $180,000 investment into the individual account I open for them. I called them up, I said, jack, what happened?
03:32
He goes, my dad passed away. I’m sorry to hear that. He goes, no, but I got some money and I put in the account. Is that okay? Is that all right? Like I was gonna say, no, it was all right. I said, no, it’s perfect. I’m glad you did that. So when I added it up, I probably made four or five thousand dollars from driving when it didn’t seem to make any kind of sense. And back then, nobody did big production. You had to have a team of people to make money, because they talk about the wall of wealth. We’ve been hearing that for a while. We’re in the middle of it right now. Back then. And you know, Anthony, if you did a $2,000 fully funded IRA, you were like the champ. And at. God, you did a $10,000 investment.
04:11
It was like, oh, my God, how did you do that? People are flying in from other states to ask you where Your tricks are right. And now people do 25, 30, 40, 50,000. It’s like not even. It’s not even a big deal. It’s like, you know, do it in the afternoon, not looking for any recognition. But back then, it wasn’t like it is today. Today, everybody’s got a rollover. Everybody’s got an inheritance. Everybody just refinanced. Everyone divorced. Couple sold one house. They’re looking to put money. Trades are 100, 200, 300, 400, $500,000. The money’s really big. So you would think that my message here is, go get a security license. And it is. And it’s that because let me tell you something, you don’t make anyone wealthy by saving money on life insurance. You guys got that right.
04:52
The only way people come financially dependent is when you systematically invest money for them. And you set that up for them. So that’s a big part of our business. But that’s not the message here. The message is this. I never would have got to the 16 million investments in the last six months. And we have over 300 million in the hierarchy. But 16, the last three months. If in the beginning, I didn’t focus on recruiting, building a premium, I built a distribution system. In the beginning, we didn’t have products like we have today investments. Nobody made a ton of money investments. And you could make a lot of money by yourself. You had to build a team to make money. Like today, you can go out and you can do a rollover like, where’s Jared Berrios?
05:31
Jared made $30,000 last month as a regional leader in the office on the Thundercats. I don’t know what he did, but I’ll betcha He didn’t write 75,000 of life insurance. Okay, I bet you that what it was, he did a couple of big trades and did that. That was impossible back then. We had to recruit and build. And even individually, you couldn’t make a lot of money because In New York, RVP’s contracts were 70% with no bonus. So even if you wrote a lot of business, had a team that did 10 by 10 or 20 by 20, you were barely scraping by with any money back then. So we knew that we had to build a business. And because we fixed focused on that leads to where we are right now. We have a big securities business right now. And 60% of my.
06:15
Look, when I started, 95% of my income came from life insurance. And little by little, it’s been moving over 60%. Now with securities now I want to get back to the 50. 50 means we got to hire some younger people, we got to get some new people doing appointments, we got to field train some new people, got to rebuild the stuff because, you know, I’ve gotten a little older. Our team’s gotten a little bit older. When you get older, it’s easy to gravitate towards investments. Because it’s easy. It’s easy to do a big trade and make a ton of money. It’s easy to do that. But to take a new person, take them on 10 training sales, write two or three life apps, hire a bunch of people, have them quit, that’s the hard part.
06:49
But that’s where the big money is, whether it’s in securities of life. So I want to talk about building a team and the stages you go through here in Primerica when you want to make things happen. Okay, so the four stage of growth in Primerica. One, the struggling stage. Now, I’m gonna tell you what this is, and some you gonna go, damn, I’m not even in the struggling stage yet. But you could be there by tomorrow. All right, so look, you have three to five directs on your team. Here’s a Bugle. Oh, shit, I don’t even have three. But you can you hire three people? We had a girl, Alexa Matula, hired three people in one week, right? Three days. So you could do. It’s not a hard thing to do.
07:30
Okay, three to five directs means you have three to 15 teammates showing up. And what happens here is you’re doing maybe two to six thousand a team premium. You’re doing all the work. Nobody knows how to do anything right. You got all new people that come in through to sit. They’re excited, they want to do things. They show up, they clap. Maybe they bring some recruits around here and there. But you’re closing the IBAs, you’re closing the Life apps, you’re doing all that stuff along the way, and you’re making maybe 500 to $3,000 a month. This is the struggling phase. This is the phase where people get a little bit of momentum, and then they have one or two bad months, and then their friends get in the head. And this is where you could lose somebody.
08:15
You got to get people out of the struggling stage. But in this stage is where you start to understand the numbers, the Primerican numbers, not premium numbers, not compensation. These are the numbers. You know. You know that every time you invite 10 people, four will show up and one will join. So if you know you’re going to have you want to have three recruits this month, you have to have 30 invites. Now you might go, I invited three people, I hired all three of them. I’m so good at this, I go, okay, that might happen, but the next 90, you might not get one. All right, not only that, but when you’re new, your numbers are much better than this because who you bringing down?
08:50
Your best friend, Your brother, your cousin, your sister in law, the guy from work, you want to do that. Okay, but 10 invites, four guests, one IBA. You need to understand this because if you brought two people, invited two people to the opportunity meeting and nobody shows up, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for you. That’s what’s supposed to happen. If you want one or two people to show up, you have to have three or five people invited. Just way it works. Number the second thing. Eight scheduled KTA’s equals five FNAs that you do, three life apps and one IBA. I was thinking we had a couple of. I have some new teammates in here that I just recruited a little shortly ago. And I’m thinking everyone’s talking about fnas, IBAs, KTA’s.
09:28
Eight scheduled kitchen table appointments equals five financial needs analysis, which equals three life apps and one IBA. That’s the cycle. Now you could decide to do that every week or you could decide to do it every two weeks. You decide to do it every month. Some of you guys decide to do it every year. Okay? But the more you condense it down to the more money you’re going to make. 50 recruits in 90 days, you’ll find an RVP in there that’s 17 recruits a month. We say you got to get to 10, you got to get to 17. When you got 17 to 20 recruits a month, you got to. Now they’re not going to be an RVP the first year next, maybe the second year, but they’re in there somewhere. Okay, Each direct these are will equal three to five teammates in attendance.
10:10
If you have three directs, you’re going to have nine to 15 people in attendance. Right. If you have directs. Right. That show. I’m talking about people that show up, it’s not like. But I hired my brother in law in 97, he doesn’t count anymore. And each direct should give you two to three recruits a month. So these are the kind of numbers of a team that’s growing, of a team that’s committed, team that’s focusing. And each direct leg will produce 2500 premium. So if you told me how much premium your Team did. I could back it out and tell you how many directs you have. And I’ll also tell you how many recruits you have. Now, you might like month to month, like over a year, over six months. The numbers work out the averages. And a securities license equal exploding income.
10:55
See, when I was an attorney, we did a lot of real estate closings in our office. And what the real estate closings did was it paid the expenses, it paid the secretaries. We got a little bit of money from that. But the big money always came on the criminal trials or the personal injury cases where there was a big check. To me, that’s like security, I think, like premiums, like the house closed that keep that money coming in. It’s steady. Every week you got a bunch of those coming in. That keeps the money going through. And then you get a big. And Jeanne’s nodding ahead, she knows. And then you get a big case and you get a big retainer, or you do a personal injury case and you get a big award, and then you have that. That’s like securities to me, okay?
11:33
And by the way, you get securities. Not looking for the big ones. You do the little $25 a month investments in Mount Vernon, and that’s how you get the big accounts later on. Now here’s the survival stage. This is where people are pretty solid. They’re probably not going to go anywhere. And this means you have five to 10 recruits on your team. Directs. Five to 10 directs, people that show up, people that come around. You got to get to this level really fast. And then you have 15 to 30 teammates showing up. I love when people like Albert, Tony, we have 40 people here. That’s freaking cool. If 40 people to a school like this, there’s no reason you can’t have 80 or 100 next time. You know you mentioned Jim Penn. I heard a story about Jim Penn, Joe, once.
12:12
He used to tell all the time he had like 12 people at a leadership school. He had him come into his room, he met with everybody right there. And. And then six months later, he came back, he had 200 people on his team. Why can’t you do that? You’re doing 6 to 15,000 a team premium right here. You do most of the work. What do you mean, most of the work? Well, some people learn what to do. Some people close their own IBAs, some people close their own life apps. They’re figuring out how to do securities trades, right? You’re competing locally here. They. This is locally. You’re competing here. Maybe you Got some recognition in the category, and it was kind of cool. And maybe you got in one category but not another. But at least.
12:55
And even if you didn’t get it, you knew you were close. Like me. I always put the numbers of the recognition on the board and on that, because when I was younger in the business, and I’d see people’s numbers come up, I go, what do I gotta do? Be number one. What do I gotta do to get recognized? You should be looking at that. If you didn’t get recognized for recruiting, you should see what the number one person recruiting did, or the number 10 or the number 15 and say, that’s my target for next time, right? And you’re earning maybe three to $8,000 a month, by the way. You don’t necessarily have to be an RVP to be in this category. They’re regional. We have a guy under Chris A. Chung’s guy, Fitzgerald Squire, who just promoted him. Or maybe it was Orville Richards.
13:37
Orville. Orville promoted Taji Giffens. How much was Kaji making before he got promoted from regional leader? A quarter million dollars as a regional leader. You don’t have to be an RVP to hit these numbers. Just go to work and make it happen. The contract will come as it comes, right? And then get the retail. This is how you do it. Okay, here’s the secret. How do you get into the survival stage? You get three teammates into the struggling stage. You think you might find people who want to struggle. They’re out there. Number three, the winning stage. You have 10 to 20 directs on your team. You have 30 to 60 teammates showing up. You have 15 to 50,000 a team premium. It doesn’t mean in the base shot could be in your hierarchy. You do some of the work.
14:30
You understand that 20% do 80% of the work. No matter how much you train them or how much you teach them. You know, our company, before we got the F and A in and before Steve Bard came and trained us how to better professional, more professional. For every life insurance agent we had license, we wrote 2.2 life apps. And what happens was 15% of the agents wrote an app in every given month. And the ones that wrote an app averaged 2.2 life apps. So they did a. They hired the trainer of Wall street to come in. They created the FNA for us. We had weekend training. We learned how to become really good. And after 10 years of getting better at this, they found that 15% of the people write a life app.
15:07
And the people write a life that’s 2.2 life apps per month. So that’s why the company never. The company, if you notice, they don’t focus on education, educating us, even though we have resources do that. The only target they have is licenses. We got to get to 200,000. We got 50,000 security. You got to think like that if you’re not an RVP yet. I got to get 30 licenses on my team. I got to get 30 license. If you’re an RVP, you want to make 100 grand, I got to get 100 license on my team. You want to make a million, got to get to a thousand licenses. It’s not a secret. Now watch. You’re competing nationally, maybe getting recognized at some of the company Trips. You’re earning 8 to $25,000 a month. And you get.
15:45
And you get here by getting three teammates at a survival stage. Come on, this is simple stuff. One after the other. And then the winning stage, okay? The freedom stage. I’m sorry, 25 plus directs 100 plus teammates showing up. You’re doing 100,000 plus of team premium. You do none of the work. I mean, none. I’m not really there yet, but I’m knocking on the door. I hang out with some guys that never. Jim Penn, haven’t wrote a sale in 37 years. Keith Otto only wrote sales because he was training his son, Jim Meyer. When he wanted to go back in the field, he had to have one of his district leaders teach him how to do it again. Fact, fact. Okay, you win every contest, you’re earning 25,000 plus per month, and you have national recognition.
16:40
You get on a TV show, maybe do an ice tea session with you, and then you do this by getting three teammates to the winning stage. So the process here is just to get to a certain level and get three people to follow you. Get to the next level, get three people to follow you, get to the next level, get three people to follow you. I didn’t say thousands of people. I said, you just got to get people to follow you. Now, this is Joyce’s compensation formula. It was slightly modified when I looked at the numbers seriously, about seven or eight years ago, and John Lavin’s a good friend of mine, and I did this presentation at one of Keith Otto’s leadership schools, and he was there, and he said, can you send it to me? I go, why? What do you want?
17:18
He goes, listen, I’m close to the million. I want you to send it to me. So I sent it to him. And what it said was, if you want to make a million dollars a month. Now, that used to be, like, hard to believe, but the Naranjo’s are making 8 million a year. That’s pretty close, right? That two thirds of the way to do that. But in order to do that, what you need to do is have eight people making a million a year. It’s not nine people, it’s not 12 people. It’s eight people. Eight people make a million a year. And if you want to make a million a year, see, that’s hard to imagine. A million a year. But let me go back to that. A million a year. How many people in our company make over a million a year?
17:52
Anybody know 160 plus people make over a million a year. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. That’s a lot of people. So it’s possible. Maybe a million a month is hard to imagine, but a million a year is within reach. In order to make a million a year, you need to have eight people making 100,000 a year. You understand? There’s probably 30, 40 people in here make 100 grand a year. If you have eight of them, you make a million a year. How crazy is that? Yeah, so anyway, John Ladman goes, listen, I’m almost at a million. Are you sure it’s eight? I go, why? He goes, because I have seven people make 100 grand a year. I go, you get that eighth one. And three weeks later he called me, goes, you can’t believe it.
18:30
The day he clicked over 100, I clicked over a million. And like, I’m sure that was just happenstance, but I made it like, damn straight, John. I know my shit. Don’t mess with me. So how do you make 100 grand a year? Who would like to make 100 grand a year? Get three people making 3,000amonth. You make 100 grand a year. Get three people making 3 thousand a month. How do you make 3,000amonth? You’re a division leader doing five by 5,000. So watch this. When I look at this, I go, okay, the first thing I do is let me become a division leader doing five by 5,000, I’ll make 3,000amonth. Then if I get three people do that with me, I go to 100 grand a year. Then if I can find eight people to do that, I’m making a million dollars a year.
19:14
Okay? Now we have a bunch of regional vice presidents and I have five people make over 100 grand a year. When I get to eight, I don’t even talk to you. Guys anymore. Nothing good to you. Look, can’t hang out with you guys. I’m making a million. Can’t hang out with you guys. Listen, believe in yourself. That’s the message here. You can do more than you think you can do after today. Let me tell you what you saw today. The lineup here is very specific. You saw people from all different kinds of nationalities, all different ages, different sexes, different religions, different backgrounds, live in different areas, all who are able to succeed here in primerica. We don’t prejudge who you are. We don’t care what your resume says.
20:05
There’s never been a test to measure the heart of a champion, if you got inside, what it takes to win. But I’ll tell you what we do here at Primerica. We give you a jersey and say, get on the field and show us what you got. And if you’re like that kind of person, like I was, stare at the ceiling, Go, man, there’s got to be more. I know I got it in me. I know I got a. If someone just gave me a chance, I would run with that. And you pray for someone to come and give you an opportunity, and if someone did, you better take advantage of it. And then your obligation is to go share it with others. Some of you guys are looking for people every single day, but you’re not talking to anyone.
20:41
You might go to church tomorrow, and you might pray and say, God, please give me somebody that wants to join my team, that loves this as much as I do, that will work as hard as I do, and then the person next to you could be praying, oh, God, please give me an opportunity in my life. I just wish someone would come in. I know I got what it takes. And at the end of the May, I should go. Peace be with you. Peace be with you. See you next week. And you leave, and you don’t say anything to anybody. And it’s not just the church. It’s when you go visit your cousin. It’s when you go hang out with your friends. It’s when you go to the car wash or the gas station or the store, you got to talk to everybody.
21:15
Because I feel like I have an obligation to give people the same opportunity that I had because this totally changed my life and my wife’s life and my son who’s sitting over there. So on behalf of the Crusaders and all the regional vice presidents in the front, and Primerican General, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. God bless you all. And let’s go kick some serious butt, guys. All right? Thank you.
