Ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, struggling to build momentum in your recruiting efforts? You’re not alone. Many reps find themselves spinning their wheels, unsure of how to break through and create a thriving business. But what if you could change that? What if you could tap into a mindset that propels you forward, no matter the obstacles? That’s exactly what Ray & Carol Costello dive into in this powerful session. They share the secrets to building a legacy through persistence, recruiting, and the right mindset. It’s raw, real, and packed with insights that can transform your approach to success. Don’t miss this must-see moment that could be the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for. Watch the video below and discover how to turn your challenges into stepping stones for growth.
Video Transcription:
First, I want to start saying thank you to Joe and Denise for putting this school together and all the leaders that are.
That came before you and had the opportunity to speak.
You know, obviously we learned a lot today, did we not? Do we wish we had more people here? My God, this room should be like, overflowed into the next room.
I hope next time we’re going to do that right.
So obviously, I hope that we all had the opportunity to get a lot information to take it to the next level.
But I’m just going to tell you a little bit about how we see it.
I mean, it’s exciting that went over to a million, and that’s only because in the early days, we had decided we needed to go focus on the front end of the business.
Recruiting, building, getting in front of people.
We did not.
And I think one of the things to help you change your business is you got to forget Covid ever existed.
Stop using that excuse.
Stop telling yourself, let’s go use Zoom.
We gotta be live, present doing it old school.
And that’s the only way it’s gonna get you where you need to go.
I mean, everybody’s raving about the Narangos at 7 million.
I can promise you one thing.
They did not shut down while Covid was going on.
They were in the office at five in the morning doing their hour of self improvement and then kept on doing whatever they needed to do to go build their business.
So we gotta try to change the way we think.
And early on, when we first got started, when we first saw this opportunity, I was so freaking excited.
I didn’t know what to do with myself, you know? And the reason I say that, it was because I was like, there’s a chance.
A chance to become rich, to become financially independent, to do what we want whenever we wanted.
And it was just something that I just.
I don’t know.
That was the vision that we saw for ourselves.
And obviously we wanted it faster and we knew it could happen faster than.
But, you know, life happens.
And sometimes, even though life happens, you got to still continue the journey.
I mean, you got to do what you need to do.
I mean, we had four kids.
We have four kids.
One had passed away.
And, you know, we had actually seven years of taking care of him and actually gave him the best life he could possibly live because of this business.
And then, you know, I never really thought or thought about how blessed were because there’s a lot of people that deal with kids or somebody that’s cancer.
And the next thing you know, they get a whole bunch of debt.
They lose their house.
They go, they don’t know what to do.
The next thing you know, they’re in the Ronald McDonald house and they got to start all over.
And then after whatever happened, right, because of this business, our business took care of us.
Because in the early days, we prospected, we recruited, we did whatever we had to do.
We were out there getting after it.
We didn’t give up.
And at the same time, some people would say, oh, you know what? I can’t do this business because my kid is doing this.
My son, he was involved in the business.
And we cheerlead the direction.
It’s all a mindset, and you gotta realize that.
You gotta think to yourself and say, what’s my mindset? You know, today they spoke about discipline.
And a lot of times the problem is we can have discipline, but we allow our emotions to control our discipline.
And we gotta realize that we have to be disciplined in a way, no matter what happens, business is business.
We got to run our business where it needs to go.
We got to do what’s necessary.
We got to realize the only way we’re going to win in business if we continue to nurture our business and do what’s necessary, not because we don’t care for our family, because we do care for our family.
And I think because of our perseverance and our focus, our determination that inspired our kids to continue doing their journey.
And, you know, I’m just so proud of my youngest son.
He actually really took care of my son who passed, and that was Matthew.
And he’s going to vice president.
He’s got this discipline you can’t even imagine.
I mean, he could sit there and say, I’m a primerica kid.
I can override the whole business.
You know, were on a trip a couple weeks ago, a few days ago with Chris, and he says, I know Matthew’s my future.
Upline.
He keeps on telling him that and he says, okay, upline.
Come here, let me talk to you.
All right.
And I said, wait a minute.
What about me? What happened here? Right? And he says, he’s my future.
Upline.
I know eventually he’s going to take over the business.
Can you say that about your kids? Is that what you’re going to do? And we got to realize, guys, this is something super special.
Stop kicking this business around like it’s a bad habit, letting other people convince you that you’re not supposed to make it.
You’re not supposed to be big.
You’re not supposed to grow a big business.
We realized early on there’s a lot.
And don’t think we had it easy.
We had a lot of people tell us that wasn’t going to work, that you’re insane, that I don’t know what you’re drinking.
My father in law thought were in a cult.
My mother said, you know, your friend’s making all this money.
I said, don’t worry.
We’re gonna do all right.
And believe it or not, today’s primerica is 101,000 times better than the primerica that we joined back in the day.
You know, Joe mentioned that we didn’t have cell phones.
We only had beepers.
Believe it or not, we used to actually run home to listen to our voice recording machine to see who called us.
And who are we gonna follow up with, believe it or nothing? So we used to run home to see, okay, let’s see what the answer machine.
Who called? Who are we going to call now? And, you know, you got a cell phone.
We have such a different primerica today, and it’s so valuable.
But I’m going to actually bring up Ray.
Because I don’t want to take up all the time.
Because I can tell you right now, focus on the goal.
Do what you need to do and allow yourself not to stray.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes, as long as you make it happen.
And a lot of times, sometimes you can make a couple hundred thousand.
And you can feel like you’re comfortable.
That’s very easy to do because you’re living a lifestyle.
And you start to say to yourself, you know, I’m okay.
I really don’t need much more.
But you know what? You still gotta focus on the goal.
Because believe it or not, I caught myself when were at 700,000.
I said, yeah, I think we’re okay.
And I said, oh, no, you gotta complete the journey and keep on moving.
And that’s what you gotta realize.
You gotta have that goal in mind.
Allow yourself not to settle.
Too often, we’re in the habit of settling and thinking we do better than everyone else.
This is a different primerica nowadays.
Pretty soon, million dollars is going to be like the new welfare, okay? And then you’re going to say to yourself, damn, I got to get this going.
All right? So get after this thing like you never got after it before.
I mean, we feel blessed to have the uplines that we have.
Roy Lipson, I mean, he’s incredible.
And believe it or not, Joe and Diddy’s is somewhat of our upline as well.
So we appreciate them as well.
And, you know, we have leaders that are coming through the system.
We have Renee.
She has, like, five or six people that just came out.
And, you know, it’s awesome.
But obviously honest right now, team, I’m going to tell you, we need a lot more people.
You got to get after this thing like you never did, Kelly.
We got to get after this.
We got John Picon today.
You saw him talk here.
He’s all excited.
He’s fired up.
Where do you have that enthusiasm, that excitement in your heart, to go get after this thing? Guys, where are you going to have an opportunity to get paid millions upon millions of dollars.
And now we can turn this dag on thing into, like, $24 million.
Joe Ensr’s dream was to make a million a month.
He used to talk to us about that, and I still say today, why not? Let’s go make it happen.
I couldn’t do this business without my partner, Ray Costello.
Appreciate you guys.
Thanks so much.
Man, oh, man.
And I can’t stand still.
Anybody excited? If you’re not excited after this event, we could dig a hole in the backyard, throw some dirt on you’re done.
A couple of things I wanted to go over all the speakers.
Did an awesome job.
Great stuff.
But I want to get real.
Everybody comes on board in Primerica, and you go through a couple of meetings, a couple of trains like this.
I’m going to be a millionaire.
Some of you going to go home and talk to your spouse who’s not here.
Ain’t gonna tell, I won’t be a millionaire, man.
We’re gonna make millions.
We’re gonna make millions.
We’re gonna make millions.
And then tomorrow, you’re not gonna prospect.
Nobody.
Not gonna happen.
When you go on an appointment, what do you consider an appointment? Now, I wanna change the dial a little bit for some of you, because you have appointment in your mind, and you hear the word appointment, you think, I’m gonna go make money.
If you think that, you’re thinking small, you don’t go on appointments to make money.
You go on appointments to recruit the person you’re talking to.
If they’re a four point or five point, if a three pointer environment, went on appointments.
If you were a one pointer to recruit you, to get you on the team, to have my greenie, who was standing next to me in front of the door of his cousin, who was a zero pointer, lived in the basement of his parents house, and I’m there talking to them like this.
What are you doing on Wednesday night? Here’s the address.
We’ll see you then.
Have a good day.
And we’d leave.
That was an appointment for us.
Most people in today’s primerica, an appointment you only go to if you think you could close a piece of business.
If you’re thinking like that, you’re not a builder, you’re a salesperson.
You’re a life insurance salesperson.
And if somebody was on the phone at the house that you’re at, and they picked up the phone because it range and they said, oh, hold on a minute.
Look, I can’t talk to you right now.
I’m with my life insurance salesperson.
I’ll call you back.
And they have the phone.
How would you feel? Throw up on my shoes, why don’t you? You wouldn’t like it, right? Then.
Why do you go there like that? If you’re thinking like that, you’re thinking tiny.
You’re not going to build a monstrous organization.
You’re not going to be able to go away.
You’re not going to be able to do what we do.
I have not closed a piece of business in 26 and a half years.
I have not sat with a client, wrote a life out.
If you want a business like that, you cannot go on appointments to close life insurance or to close an investment.
Your mindset must be, I’m going to close a recruit.
And if they want life insurance, then that’s after the fact.
After you fill out the IBA, that’s when you fill out the life.
After the IBA, if you get a guest in the op room and they come to you, well, this used to happen to us all the time.
I thank God that the great joints didn’t allow us to sell life insurance until he removed the moratorium on sales.
We go on an appointment, and I had people that come to the op meeting, and after the op meeting, they say, I think I have one of those cash value, whole life insurance policies, could you help me with that? And I’d say, yeah, but let’s fill out your IBA.
If somebody did that in your office, Monday, Tuesday, whenever your next meeting is, if your guest came out of the op meeting and said to you, I think I have a life insurance like that they said is bad, that has cash value, could you help me with that? You’d forget about that.
He came to the op meeting, you’d say, well, what time are you going home right now? I’m going in your direction.
I’ll meet you at your house to write the life app, and you’d forget about the recruit.
You’d get referrals for the life app.
You wouldn’t get referrals for the recruit, and you’d miss the bigness of this business.
Stop thinking small, your minuscule thinking of a life app.
You’re worried about a couple hundred dollars you’re gonna make when you lose the thousands.
Because you can’t go in thinking for the life app and recruit the guy after you write the life app, because no one that I’ve ever spoken to after I write a life app on them say, I think I want to sell life insurance like you’re doing.
But if I talk to the guy and say, look, I think you could be great for the business.
You have a great personality.
I’d love working with you.
What if we could get you working with us on a part time basis, and we just get you making an extra $500 a week part.
Part time? Would you consider putting more time into business with us? Who would say no to that? You could talk to a guy making $200,000 a year and tell him like that, and they say, well, at least take a look at it.
Great.
What are you doing Wednesday night? Come to our office.
Come to our office.
Come to my office.
Somebody said, I don’t remember who said, if you went for an interview at Chase bank, where do they do it? On Zoom? No, come to the office.
The hiring manager has to meet you.
Not, oh, I needed.
I need to say, at least say I had a guest.
Could you come on Zoom, please? Keep your camera on while you’re in your jammies.
The one piece with the footsies and the trap door in the back.
And then you put a decent shirt on so you look like you’re professional.
And then they take their camera and shut it off, and they’re not even at the computer.
They’re making dinner, and you think they’re listening.
Then when they tell you, I’m not interested, it’s not for me.
They weren’t in.
They weren’t even there.
When are you going to wake up with that? Stop thinking.
Zoom is going to make you rich.
Since COVID You know how many rvps were promoted in our hierarchy because of Zoom? Zero.
Zero.
The year before COVID and zoom? Four.
Promoted in the hierarchy.
Wow.
And since Zoom took over.
Zero RVP promotions.
Look at the company numbers.
Same thing’s happening in the company.
Keep that in mind when you’re going out across the kitchen table to talk to somebody.
Are you talking to them with the recruit? I’m going to recruit this guy mindset, or I got to pay my car payment.
I got to make $350 here.
Stop thinking small.
Because what if.
What if that person you’re going to see and you have the mindset of selling them, you left, and what happened was that person was a Joe Cardina and you missed them because you wrote them up and you didn’t recruit them.
What if they were a Jo Ensor? What if they were a Keith Otto? What if they were a Hector Lamarck and you missed them because you wanted and needed the $350 today? Anyone you recruit will eventually become your client.
Anyone you recruit.
No one can be in this business and have a cash value policy.
No one.
And if you want a promotion, and at least in our team in hierarchy, if you don’t have a life app, well, then I don’t train you.
You get trained.
Go on, Zoom.
Go on, Pol.
Go find somebody to train you.
I ain’t training you.
I ain’t going across the kitchen table with you.
And they go, why? Because if we go out and you’re not a client and your brother asks you, while we’re sitting there, are you doing this? And you say no, what chance do we have of closing that person as a recruit or as a sale? Zero again.
Right? So if you want to build a team and build a hierarchy, keep the mindset of, I’m going to recruit you first and we’re going to write you up later.
God bless you.
I hope you learned something.
Thank you all.
Rv peace.
Thank you so much.
