Ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, struggling to build momentum in your Primerica business? You’re not alone. Many reps hit a wall, unsure of how to push past the plateau and reach new heights. But what if you could break through that barrier and unlock the secrets to success from those who’ve been there and done that? In this powerful session, you’ll hear from top earners who have navigated the challenges of the financial services industry and come out on top. With insights from the likes of Andy Onstead, you’ll discover the mindset shifts, recruiting strategies, and leadership tips that have propelled them to million-dollar success. This isn’t just another training—it’s a game-changer. So, if you’re ready to transform your business and achieve the results you’ve been dreaming of, don’t miss this must-see video. Dive in now and get ready to take your Primerica journey to the next level!
Video Transcription:
Okay, so everybody in the room is an RVP.
This is not, you know, this is not a sneak in meeting.
Hi, Jim Meyer.
How are you? I miss you.
How’d you get here? By yacht or by plane? Oh, no.
So one of the things we’ve learned is that rv that are sitting up here, I call you.
All rvps have boatloads of wisdom.
So we’re going to start this session out, sort of get capturing some of that wisdom.
So what we want to do is we want to make sure that somebody like Charlemont, what I would tell you to do, you need a microphone since you’re the first one.
We got a few.
There we go.
So, charlemagnet, what I would tell you to talk to this group about is what you would say to your own rvps that are all hungry know, tell me how I get to be you.
What is it that I need to do and be real and be authentic and give them your best advice.
Okay, you’re up first.
Absolutely.
So how are you guys doing? Excited.
Very excited to be here, guys.
I get promoted RVP.
In 2001.
When I got to RVP, I didn’t understand what I have in my hands because I was chasing the life insurance.
I never did anything.
It took me about nine years to make $100,000.
But when we made a decision to switch from going after the finance, which is insurance and investment, we’ve switched to the distribution system.
Nine years later, the company pay us over a million dollars.
So what I found out about this business, yes, you can be an RVP, but the RVP is the starting line.
It’s not the finish line.
You got to have a vision, clear vision of what you want yourself three years from now, five years from now.
What I understand is, like, once you become a vice president, you have to have a game plan.
Three to five years to build yourself a hierarchy, and he has to be a millionaire hierarchy.
So if you go to work, which is put hours behind this thing, work with people, develop people, three to five years, you should be able to build a millionaire hierarchy and move forward.
That’s what I’m excited about.
Thank you.
Okay, Johnny, you and I go back a couple decades or three or four.
So what would you tell your younger self? My younger self, I would tell my younger self to get very disciplined in the area of daily prospecting for direct recruits.
I was very good at getting direct recruits in bunches and then working depth and working with them.
And that served us very well.
Had I continued to stay focused on my direct prospecting, and I had continued to add direct recruits.
We’d be much bigger today.
And quite honestly, the search for the most coachable, hungry, ambitious people is the work.
And when I would find somebody like that, I would tend to hang out there for a couple of years.
And through replacements, we got big.
But if I could have gotten wider at the beginning, I think it would.
Have really served me right.
So let’s expand on that for a minute.
John, if you go wide, you feel like you’re working really hard and that nobody’s listening to you.
Yeah.
They aren’t.
Right.
So if nobody’s listening to me and I’m going wide, I lose my focus on going wide.
That’s the danger zone.
Right.
You get, like, worn out from what I would call the mediocre people.
Well, here’s what we know.
We know that with numbers, someone will listen.
Yeah, there is somebody who will listen.
So how wide is that? If I have ten direct licenses in.
My base shop, it’s how wide you have of leaders.
And I think the key for me was if I could get three leaders at once direct to me, and I could have three locations, then it was three locations going.
That was my number that I used.
And so we worked that and we would get replacements from those three.
Well, had I added a fourth and a fifth and a 6th during that time, I just think that it’s that search for that next hungry person that you want to build a relationship with and lock arms with.
And I think everything starts there.
So for most of the people here, their problem isn’t getting too wide.
Right.
And that’s the work that all of you have to do.
If you want to go fast, there’s only one way to go fast.
You’ve got to find people that want to go fast with you.
And that comes through numbers.
It doesn’t come through anything else that.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
Okay, Assad, so as you look back on your career, how many years did it actually take in running a base, and how big was that base to build this stable million dollar plus income? Great question, Rhonda.
I heard it said before that for a period of time, about three years, you have to 100% believe you’re the hardest working person in this entire company.
Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, but you have to be convinced that nobody is outworking you for at least a three year period of time.
And for me, honestly, I look at my early years in the company, and I was me with a lot of clients and doing a lot of business, but I wasn’t recruiting and field training and duplicating myself.
And so it just took once I decided I was going to do arch system.
So for about six years, I just averaged about two direct recruits a month, and my income exploded over six years.
From 131,000.
Get ready to give me a standing ovation all the way to 141,000.
Come on.
That was terrible.
Right? Art said 8531 per week.
The one at the end is a direct recruiter week.
For the next three years, I average about one recruiter week, and my income raised about 69,000 per year instead of 1500 per year.
That was before bonuses, before securities comp, before all the stuff that we have now.
So the key is three years of doing what you know you’re supposed to be doing.
I would just say this.
You know you’re doing it right.
If you can answer any question any teammates ask you with the words, do it like I do it, or here’s what I do, or do what I do, then you know you’re doing it right.
That’s priceless.
Do what I do, not what I say.
Right.
Okay, Ed, so let’s talk about your business.
So, your philosophy about business says what to an RVP? What’s one of the common things that come out of your mouth? Basically, you just got to reinvent yourself from the very beginning.
Kind of just make sure that you.
You start off every month, every week, whatever the case may be.
You gotta put yourself in a position where you’re, know, I’m just starting off.
I just turn in my IBA right now, and you want to picture yourself as a brand new person, and you just want to say, okay, what’s my next step? Well, first of all, I got to get trained.
I got to recruit.
I got to get me three.
I got to get my promotion.
Once you got your promotion there, you’re like, okay, now what I got to do is duplicate myself and do this thing six times and see if I can get six district leader and become an RVP.
One of the things that I appreciate about Jimmy is that what he did.
I mean, when he came over to Jacksonville, I remember looking at your business, and I don’t know what happened.
You went over to bill widows or something like that, and you came back and know, I’m just going to reinvent myself.
I’m going to start from scratch.
And this guy right here, and it’s something that I’ve always done, is basically say, just start from the very beginning.
Get yourself licensed, get yourself district.
And once you’re district, start looking even if you’re an RVP, okay, I’m going to develop another district.
I’m going to develop my 6th district.
I’m going to become an RVP.
Once you’re an RVP, let me start jumping in and developing other rvps.
No matter what level you’re at, if you just maintain that and make it a philosophy as far as this is what I’m going to be tracking.
So on a monthly basis, you know, exactly what is it that you got to be doing? What’s your goal? Otherwise, it’s like, I’ve talked to some of the folks out here and say, so what’s your goal? Well, I’m going to recruit 20 people this month.
Well, what’s the purpose of that? Why are you going to recruit 20? Well, maybe I’ll find a leader out of that.
Well, that’s good.
Well, why don’t you just focus on, let me get a leader, let me become that leader, and then let me show someone else how to become a leader as well and just start building it from there.
And it helps when you start getting these young guys in.
I mean, I’m so blessed that, you know, these two little studs over here, Jason and Eric, where I just beat them up until they became rvps.
But, hey, it helps in doing something like that.
Thank you.
That was great.
That was great.
All right, Jimmy, my favorite maniac in the right, so.
I know, right? He’s amazing.
So one of the things that I’ve drawn from you throughout our career is your enthusiasm and specifically in front of people that you never show doubt, never show pain, never show anything other than your belief and your love for the business and your generosity towards your team.
So maybe we can speak to that being not necessarily a talent.
It might have been a God given talent, I don’t know.
But developing the right personality that has to show in order to win big.
Sure.
Thanks.
Words.
We go way back.
Okay.
Jerry, Rhonda and I, we met them back when were both.
I was part of entrance hierarchy.
You would come and study it, and Joe taught us early on, never show hurt, never show doubt, never show fear.
And did any of this come natural to me? No.
I’m a baby in a lot of ways.
Okay.
If something’s wrong, I want to just be a baby.
Kim knows it more than anybody.
And all this enthusiasm that I’ve shown over the years, it’s a switch.
I truly think it’s a switch.
I played basketball.
If you get put in a game, you better go in the game like you’re mentally ready to play.
This is a team sport.
People are counting on us.
So you got to get yourself revved up.
You got to get yourself motivated.
You got to get yourself pumped.
Whatever word you put on it, Anthony Robbins teaches.
You got to change your state.
This is all stuff that I’ve worked rather hard on, okay? I will tell you, in the locker room, for the first time in my life, I’m wearing an apple watch because I didn’t make it to the senior leadership meeting last week.
And the reason I didn’t make it to senior leadership meeting last week was In the hospital, and they said to me, what do you do? Like, your heart.
It’s like you’re running a marathon, and you’re sitting here.
I go, what do you mean? What do you mean? I share this with you.
Not for people to say, how you feeling? Please.
Okay.
I’m feeling amazing.
I’m unbelievable, okay? The good Lord’s got a great plan for me.
If he decides to take me home, I’m ready to get the hell out of here, too.
Okay? So whatever the plan is, it is.
But to answer the question directly, it’s a decision.
Walk faster, talk louder.
Smile.
This friggin watch.
The first day I had it starts vibrating.
What the hell? I’m doing a meeting with our one more time team.
I’m so proud of our one more time team journey.
Ron, the turn is on a kumo space.
I’m with these guys every day, or most days, I should say 930.
We have an RVP meeting.
Then we meet with the full timers, and I’m doing my thing into the computer.
It’s going decibel reading.
You’re over your decibel reading.
I’m like, what the hell is this? So a couple of the more techie guys are like, it’s saying that the decibel you’re at is too loud.
It’s going to hurt your hearing.
I’m like, screw this.
How do you reset this? But I learned from nature.
It’s very hard for people to don’t think you’re excited, to not believe you’re excited if you talk louder, if you walk faster, if you smile, no one cares what you’re going through.
So, as leaders, we get paid in direct proportion to how much crap you could deal with.
That’s the reality of our business.
I love when you say, boy, I do anything to have your business.
You’re full of shit, okay? You’d be dead if you had my business.
Because there’s so much crap that goes on every day.
Every day there’s phone calls, here’s this, here’s that.
But I don’t focus on that.
You hire people to handle that and you focus on where you’re going.
So why am I excited? Because I’m fired up about building 100 new people to make $2,000 a month, ten to make 10,000 a month and three to make 25,000 a month.
I know without a shadow of a doubt we’re going to have brand new rvps.
Our theme now is 500,000 or bust.
This couples the example of it.
Now maybe we all can’t recruit in the base shop like they do, but there are people in this day where most of us, all of us as a matter of fact, we knew everybody who made a quarter million dollars a year.
Everybody.
Now there’s brand new million dollar earners and we’re not being dispelling.
Who’s that? That guy’s a million dollar.
This company is on a trajectory that is like this.
And by the way, it needs to because as Miguel Ilridge said to our team last Tuesday, a million dollars today is equal to $300,000 when some of us made it.
When I made $100,000 in 1986, that’s equal to $30,000 right now.
So I’m so frustrated by so many of our amazing vps.
They’re amazing, but they don’t make $500,000 a year.
And it’s very uncomfortable for them to be around me because my mindset is 500,000 or bust.
Because you’re not living the life.
Now, I know you think that your old house and your old car is good, okay? And if that’s what you want, great.
I want more.
I want to be around people that are hungry.
Yesterday was an amazing day in sports.
Actually, those 48 hours coaches that are legendary, we got to watch Bill Belichick.
They had a mutual agreement.
Bullshit.
It was not mutual, okay? Bill played the game because the owner said it’s over.
And believe me, Bill’s still going to coach.
He’s going to coach what’s his name out.
My man at Alabama, Saban’s done.
He don’t like the game no more.
He don’t like these kids leaving.
In college football used to recruit a kid once.
If they left, it was difficult as hell for the play somewhere else.
Now they can leave whenever they want.
We got the greatest gig in the world because what he just said, anytime we want, we can start over again.
And what Bill Whittle did exactly say was he told his rvps at Blake Whittle’s RVP promotion.
I was there as a guest.
I’m friends with that family.
I wanted to experience that promotion.
And Bill challenges rvps.
Go home and repromote yourself to RVP.
You want to change your life in the next 36 months? Go repromote yourself to RVP.
I’m doing it.
I said I was a regional leader.
I gave myself a Premature promotion.
I’m really division.
Last month, we hit 10,000 in production, 38 recruits, 10,000.
And we’re growing.
But make a decision to either grow or stop kidding yourself.
Nothing’s worse than just playing in the middle.
There’s nothing worse than that in our opinion.
So being excited is a decision.
I’ll tell you.
Walk faster, talk louder, smile.
Turn your apple.
Watch off when it tells you’re talking too loud, because people think you’re excited.
If you talk, you.
Thanks, Jimmy.
You know, that’s so true.
And by the way, Kim always yells at me in the car, the poor thing, because I was the speaker in the car.
She’s like, you don’t have to scream.
She sits like this.
I have to, because Rhonda said she thinks I’m excited.
That is your strength.
There’s no doubt about know.
Art Williams used to say, you either get mad or you get excited, but you can’t be know.
Okay, Jerry, you get the award winning question of the day.
How do you get such an amazing partner? Yeah, let’s just switch gears a little bit.
Let’s switch gears.
Can’t keep her hands.
Know.
I know.
And I run around the house.
I did say to Jerry, go, who’s the hot girl doing the interviews here? Yeah, I know, Jerry, right? I run around the house naked chasing.
All right, relax.
Relax, buyer, relax.
This is what I have.
To many people, so many people strive to have a partnership that’s strong.
And I know that you understand the work that went into that, and I think you should speak to that, because we’ve been strong.
We’ve been here a long time.
We’re having fun.
We’ve always had fun.
So maybe talk about how you get a committed partner.
They don’t just pop up.
It gets earned.
So talk about that.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Good afternoon.
Good to see you.
All.
Day one, I told Rhonda that I didn’t want to do this unless she wanted to do it with me.
And it proved to be so much more than either of us ever thought that we had to job the job at hand, the task at hand, building a business is not a one person job.
Building a business is not something that you can do in 8 hours a day.
I mean, it is absolutely all hands on deck.
All the know.
Rhonda, I always kids about how I have five people that support me and service me, that work on helping provide everything that we need to provide so we can do everything that we do.
Every know.
Rhonda absolutely works in this business every day, just as I have.
Just as we always have together.
We’ve always met on Sunday night and had our meeting for a week.
Meeting for the week.
And what are you going to do this week? What’s happening this week? What are you working on? What do I need to work on? We’ve always attacked this thing as a partnership because it’s worthy, it’s too big to ignore.
And we see so many people.
Jimmy talked about how he’s frustrated with people that he knows are better, that don’t work hard, that don’t take it serious, that don’t go for, you know.
Rhonda and I have always been puzzled by partnerships that go in two different directions every day.
The fact is, you have to work together if you want to do something great.
And if you do work together, you can make it happen not only faster, but you can make it happen much bigger than you ever dreamed of.
So I think that just like building a business is all about having conversations.
It’s all about communicating with people.
The key to having a good partnership, I think, is solid communication and really working on doing not necessarily the same things all the time, but that every partnership should know and be able to understand every part of the business and work on every part of the business.
Now, that wasn’t always comfortable for know.
I remember the day Rhonda tells the story often when I told her I wasn’t going to show up to an opportunity meeting and she had to make the presentation.
Rhonda recruited somebody once, and I said, I’m not taking them in the field.
You got to take them in the field.
We both had to learn the business in order to build a business.
And I think that it’s hard work, but it’s worth it.
Well, let’s take it one step further.
So just to not make people feel like they have to have that, but what it did for us being together like that was.
First of all, I understood what the pain and the agony and the sacrifice that he was making because I had a front row seat, I went to the meeting.
I saw, and when he made commitments and he looked people in the eye and he said, I’m going to help you win.
We’re going to do this together.
I understood what that meant.
So that’s the first thing, is just exposure for a partner is really helpful, so that they understand that you’re getting committed to other people in a way that you weren’t before.
And then the other thing is that we took ten years to get to a million, and we’ve been paid almost $50 million, plus our stock.
And so I look at that and I say, well, so, yeah, thanks.
It’s the opportunity.
It’s the system.
It’s not us.
But we understood the enormity, sort of, kind of.
Of the opportunity that every time we sent an app, we’d get a check.
And the more applications we sent, the more checks would come through, and the more times we talked.
Help people learn how to send an app and get a check, we would get another check because they sent an app, and we understood just the mechanics of it.
And that duplication, the sooner it took place, the more we would be on our way to financial independence, which is why we came here.
We did not come here to save any families.
I’m glad we do.
I am.
I’m very happy we do, because that kept us here, and that kept us feeling like there’s some purpose, there’s some other reason why we’re here, other than money.
But we really came here to become financially independent, and the sooner the better.
So that was also part of the sacrifice, part of the partnership, if you will.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Okay, you two, you just got to do some talking.
We need to know.
People need to understand.
You built a 400 by 400 base shop just now.
Pretty close.
We’re getting there.
You’re getting there? That’s incredible.
All right, so I know there’s you, there’s hard work, there’s amazing family behind you.
But what are you telling people? What are you telling these rvps? If they could be a fraction of what you are, they’d be on their way.
So go ahead.
Yeah, I think.
Well, first of all, look at this guys.
This is crazy.
Look around.
Come on.
Give these guys a round of applause.
That’s wild.
I got a kink in my neck because I love you, too, but I might be chasing Jerry around naked myself a little bit later.
Okay, but anyways, just kidding.
But, no, I think the biggest thing is if I could give everybody one thing, you got to really take the lid off.
I mean, I talked to so many people that come up, and they’re asking, Rhonda, what are we doing? What are we doing? And I ask what numbers they ran last month.
And it’s funny because Brittany and I even talk, like, when you tell them large numbers and you start getting triple digits, they shut down.
And we have what we call, like, the redline bubble.
Like, our people, they don’t even realize how big they are right now.
And that stuff is taught by us to our people.
Your people.
And how big they think this thing can actually get is literally taught by you.
So what are you teaching your people? We come in, a good regional leader for us is 100 by 100.
That’s like, good, right? And that’s just the standard we have.
It’s crazy because we do weekly recognition.
And this last week, our base recruited 121 people last week.
And it was crazy because I tell our people, I remember five years ago being in the base shop, and we would say, whoa, we’re going to get 100 people this month.
And people looked like we’re crazy, right? And I remember that we had accountability.
One of our first meetings, Jerry, they would go around, and after the op night, the RVPs would break out in their offices and they would get a little huddle and everyone would say what they were going to do for the month.
And Jimmy, it’s like the first week of the month.
And people are like, yeah, one by one.
I’m like, is that for the month? That’s for the month.
I’m like, bro, it’s the 6th.
It’s the 6th, right? And they came to us.
We don’t know what the hell we’re doing.
So I’m like, I’m going to get all of it.
Why would I not expect it all? The problem is, one of the things our RVP taught us, the great Nate and Melanie Brayley.
They said, you have to think so big.
Your people’s vision fits inside of it.
Because if you’re talking about 15 x 15 or 30 x 30 or whatever, your people organically, they’re going to mentally think that small.
If we’re talking about 500 by 500, there’s no limit to what they can do.
And it’s crazy because even people come up and the numbers Brittany and I and the team are running right now, it’s crazy, but I’m still pissed.
I know there’s so much more in the tank.
Like, if you look at the multiples of our businesses, three who get what? That’s one more time.
Three who get three who get what? Yeah.
So we’re doing 328 recruits in the base shop, Jimmy, and I’m pissed.
I’m like, we should be at 900 right now.
What’s going on? And it doesn’t get any easier.
But I tell you, if you think small and you expect small and you only talk small to your people, you can never get upset when you get small results.
Right? It’s literally we all, ourselves included, we have to have the courage to talk fast, talk loud about being big.
People want to be somebody and you have to give them the environment to grow.
What kind of an environment are we bringing our people into? Right? And I think that’s the biggest thing.
And Ronnie, you said, what are we saying to our new people? We don’t recruits.
We recruit rvps.
I think it’s so important, too, that we tell our people what they’re coming into right off the bat.
Like, I tell our people, we have so much activity, the people that we recruit, I let them know, like, look, I need you to come on.
You need to get licensed.
Pass, go independent.
Pass.
We have so much going on.
Can’t keep up with it.
I’m looking for people to help us and open up a new office.
Is that you right there? It’s setting the standard for speed and bigness.
Right.
And I think it’s just also about setting the tone with people and letting them know that you need them but you’re going to do it without them.
That’s the other thing, too.
You had such a good question.
You were asking them about what they would do earlier or tell themselves as a new RVP or if they were starting over.
You got to stop expecting things from your people.
Like, God love them.
If they’re going to win.
I mean, I would love our people so much, I would chase them away from the business.
The problem is we all see the vision of how big this thing can get.
But your people, I hate to break this to you, some of them don’t want to get big, and that’s okay, but what do you want to get out of it? Let’s get you that and then go get the next person.
The next person.
Find more people.
So I think it’s just a culture of big and we’ve removed the lid.
That’s one of the biggest blessings the zoom has done for us, is it’s removed us from any other thing.
And now we’re off on an island by our own and we’re just getting massive.
And it’s so funny.
We’ve got some great legends in our bay shop that used to be with the business 17 years ago, and they made a comeback, and they’re like, man, it’s like, if I’m not doing 30 by 30, I don’t even get recognized, because that’s how big our people are going.
I’m so proud of our regional leaders that aren’t even in a room right now.
The great Abby Schauvener, she’s doing 175 recruits by 75,000 in premium a month after month after month.
I’m so proud of her.
Right? You got Noah McQueen in the front row.
Noah, stand up for everybody real quick because your shoes look so dabbers like this.
Give it up for Noah McQueen.
He’ll be speaking later.
Noah McQueen’s been licensed in the business in Primerica for 14 months.
And in 14 months, he’s made $270,000.
He’s an RVP, right? He’s got fully licensed, and he’s got a second diamond.
And these guys been in the business 14 months.
Retired as a lieutenant colonel from our military.
Give him up some love for that.
Right? Retired.
And they actually called him back and said, you know what? We screwed up your numbers.
You actually owe us one more year.
No, part time.
This guy’s part time in the business and makes zero excuses.
Like, these are the people we’re looking for.
When you’re talking about getting big and finding the right people.
I learned, john, like you were saying, I love the people.
I love everyone.
But I’m going to make sure I give my love to the people that deserve it, of that love.
And you know what’s really good is when you find those hungry people, when you go so wide, John, you’re bound to find them.
And it rejuvenates me when I find a runner.
Like, how do you feel finding these young new studs? Like you’re back in the game, right? And that’s how I feel every time.
Every time.
I tell you, if you feel like you’re having to push or pull your people, you need to stop riding a rented mule and quit trying to move a dead body and go find you some new directs and do it again.
Right? Sorry, baby.
Go ahead, talk to the people.
You’re awesome.
That was great.
So I got.
Be enthusiastic, be loud, talk big, right? It’s a simple business.
Okay, so, Brittany, there’s a lot in your life.
You’ve got bunches of children homeschool, right? Yep.
And so talk to us about, know, providing the environment for your husband to work in.
How does that go? Yeah, it’s kind of trial and error at first.
You see all these different examples of partnership, and you can start going different ways, but you have to figure out what works for you guys.
At the beginning, we joined in the beginning, we started at the beginning, got licensed together, and I went on the first couple of appointments, but I also knew that I wanted to home school and kind of switch gears.
I had been working since forever, so I wanted to be able to spend time with my children.
So I was like, here’s what we’re going to do.
I know what we’re doing now.
I still showed up to everything.
I never missed a mee
