Video Summary
Transcription:
You know, when you join Primerica, you join the person that recruited you. You don’t know who your upline is. You don’t know what an upline is. You don’t know who’s your hierarchy. You don’t know who’s going to be your snsd. You don’t even know what that is. I just want to remind everybody sitting in this room that you hit the freaking lottery when you got into this hierarchy, because there is no better hierarchy in Primerica than Keith and Daniel Otto’s hierarchy. So give them a big round of applause. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. How can you be in a better hierarchy? You got the best training, the best zooming, the best exposure to speakers because of who Keith is and the respect that they have in this company. So they are really amazing.
A couple of years ago, I went to a deli in the city that I’ve been living in for over 40 years in New Jersey, and I’ve been going to this deli every day to get my coffee. So everybody there knows me. The owners know me, the girls behind the counter know me. Everybody knows me. And also, I put everything on Facebook. They all follow me. So, you know, my life is on my sleeve. Everybody knows how I live. So I walked in a couple of years ago and there was this guy standing there, and I had not seen him in 20 years. He used to be my landscape guy. And I was like, oh, my gosh, Mike, how are you? I haven’t seen you in so long. And, you know, landscape guys work hard, right?
And it was the summer, and he was sweaty and. And dirty and a little stinky and embarrassed, I think, of how he looked. And so I said, how you doing? And he kind of, like pointed to himself deprecatingly and went, living the dream. And one of the girls from behind the counter yelled out, well, Patty really is living the dream. And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, that’s great. I’m happy for you. And then he said, I didn’t know that was possible. And that’s when it hit me, folks. Yes, we sell insurance, yes, we sell securities, yes, we recruit people. But what we really do is we get people to understand that the dream is real and that the dream is real for them, because people don’t dream anymore.
If you go out right now and you ask people who are not in Primerica if you could have anything in the world that you want, what do you want? And people all say the same thing. They want a big house, they want to travel, they want to be able to send their kids to school. They want a Maserati or a Ferrari or whatever. But if you realize that the average person in America, and I looked this up 15 minutes ago, makes $62,036 a year, that’s not a dream, that’s a fantasy. They know they’re never going to have that stuff. You might as well say you want a mansion on Mars, because it’s just as likely to happen, right?
So what we need to do is we need people to understand that the dream is real in Primerica, that you could show people, identify a dream, and I will show you how to get that accomplished. See, I believe people go through three phases in life. So you start out, you’re born, you go through the learning phase, right? Your parents, your teachers, your grandparents, they teach you stuff you’re learning. Then you get to be 18, 22, you graduate high school, you graduate college, you go get a job, and now you’re in the earning phase of your life. And for most people, folks, that earning phase, that’s the majority of their life. Most people work. I used to say 40 years of their life, no more, right?
People now work 45, 50, you see hundred year old greeters at Walmart, they’re there 60 years, they’re working their life away. And then what happens is when they finally do retire, they realize they oh crap, I never saved enough money. Oh crap, somebody from Primerica never came and talked to me. I didn’t know the difference between term and whole life. So I had this junky whole life policy. And what do they find out? They find out they can’t afford to live. And I want to name that the yearning phase of their life. They’re yearning for what they could have had, yearning for the way it would have been, yearning, wishing if I had a dollar for every person who said to me, I wish I had listened to you and Dennis when you first joined Al Williams in 1982.
Yeah, you, yes, you do wish you listened to us. So see, in Primerica, though, I think we go through couple different, well, one different phase. We still go through the learning phase when you’re born, but now instead of getting a regular job, you join Primerica. And yes, you’re earning, but I want to relabel that phase. I want to label that the building phase, because you’re not just working a job for somebody else, you’re building your own company within a company. You’re building your financial future, you’re building your entire destiny. If you do it right. And now you don’t have to put in 40, 50, 60 years. You can condense your time frame and honest to God, do it in as much time as you want to take.
We got people in this company who have proven that you could go from zero to a million dollars a year in eight years. We got one guy who did it. We had one guy who did it in two years. And Asif is going to do it in four or five years. We have people who are doing it. So now you don’t have to put in 40, 50 years. And now you get to the last phase. And the last phase is called the living the dream phase. That’s where I’ve been for a long time. That’s where Keith and Danielle are. That’s where the Narens are. That’s where the leaves are. They’re still working. They want more. But you’re living the dream. You don’t have to worry about money. Look, guys, I got 99 problems. My husband just died, right? Money is not one of them.
Ain’t that a great thing? Right? So I’m going to tell you real briefly for those of you who’ve never heard real sure apologies to those who have heard 3,000 times, just a little bit about myself. So I was born and raised in Patterson, New Jersey. Can you just put my slide up? I always show a picture of the house I was born and raised in because I don’t want anybody to think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And that should prove it right there. And in case you think that whole house was ours, were on the first floor, four little rooms, hundred by fifty square foot lot in Paterson, New Jersey. It’s still there, right? My father was born in Paterson, New Jersey. He was first generation Italian American. My mother was a literal Hungarian coal miner’s daughter.
So I didn’t come from any money, right? But I was an only child, and I was an only grandchild and I was an only niece. So everybody’s dream was on Patti. I was going to be the first one to graduate college. I was going to be the first one to do something special with my life. So being the dutiful daughter that I was, I went off to college. And in my first semester of my second year, I dropped out and got a job as a sales girl at the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, New Jersey, for minimum wage. My father was devastated. He couldn’t believe that this girl that he had just pinned all his hopes and dreams on was just going to end up Average and ordinary like everybody else. So every night he would come home, he’d brainstorm, Carlos.
And he’d say, I know what you should do. Why don’t you go be an executive secretary and you can marry one of the big executives there. But by the way, it was all about who I would marry. That’s the way people thought. My father was born in 1918. It was all about, get your daughter to marry a rich guy. So this was like his goal in life, right? Put yourself in a position where you marry a rich guy. So be an executive secretary. No, daddy, I don’t want to be an executive secretary. Why don’t you be a stewardess? You’ll marry a pilot. No, daddy, I don’t want to be a stewardess. And then one day, by coincidence, which I do not believe in, he got called to jury duty. And he said, you know what you should be? You should become a court reporter.
You know, the court reporter is the person who sits in front of the courtroom with the little machine, and you’ll marry a lawyer. That sounded a little better to me. I like the thought of sitting in front of the courtroom with my legs crossed and having everybody look at me, right? That’s what really appealed to me. So I opened the phone book. I said, all right, let me look at it. Open the phone book. Because this is what we had back in those days. Yes, I am that old. And looked for court reporting schools. Hackensack, New Jersey, went to the court reporting school. Liked what I saw, got out of a two year course in nine months. Not bragging, just reporting. This is the truth. And I became a court reporter.
And on June 1978, I opened the door to the courtroom and there was this guy a lot older than me, navy blue pinstripe suit. He just had that power thing about him that I’ve always been attracted to. And that’s how I met my first late husband, Dennis Schechter, who I built this business with. Now Dennis, when I met him, was already pretty successful. Back in 1978, he was already Mikey, making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, which is a lot of money today. That’s a freaking boatload back then. So I was like, cha Ching, this is good. And I was doing well as a court reporter. So I thought, okay, this is a good thing, right? And it was. He was in the insurance business. He had a general insurance agency. He sold, you know, mortgage insurance, house insurance, car insurance.
And of course he sold life insurance. And of course he sold whole life, because that’s what you had to sell to make money. Back then, nobody knew about term. The insurance companies certainly didn’t want you to know about term. It was around, but they didn’t want you to sell it, right? They wanted you to sell whole life. We know why. That’s how they make their money, right, Roy? So anyhow, but Dennis was a smart guy. He knew term was better. There was just no way to sell it and make money. And then heard about Al Williams. He flew down Atlanta, he met Art Williams, he came back, he was so excited. I had never seen him like this before, Joe. And all of a sudden he was just talking it up and so excited he was going to join the company.
So here I was 26 years old at the time. I was like, okay, I support you, go do it. I’m a supportive wife. You think it’s a good thing to do, go do it. This is great. I’m doing my thing. You do your thing, just make money. That’s all I cared about, right? Anyway, he calls me back up about it took about nine months for us to be able to get our license in the state of New Jersey. We finally got our license. And he calls me up one day and he says, I heard there’s this thing they have called a fast start school. I said, oh yeah, what’s that? He said, well, they have a big meeting and all the people that joined up come and you talk about different plans, products, and you give out awards for whoever sold the most.
And you just talk about how great the company is and all the different things. I said, oh, that’s good. He goes, and so I’m the guy running the meeting. I’m going to be doing that. I said, that’s great. He said, and I also found out they have this thing called the Partners organization. I said, oh yeah, what’s that? He said, well, that’s where the partner of the guy giving the meeting that would be you. You have to run a meeting with all the partners of the agents and you talk about how the partner gets paid, how the partner gets promoted, the agent’s spouse, how the agent spouse gets paid, how the agent spouse gets promoted, and what is exactly our company about by determined invested difference. So I want you to do that. Here’s Angela Williams, phone number. That’s our founder’s wife.
For those of you who are new, call her up and she’s going to tell you what to do. And I was like, yeah, okay, put it in the drawer. Didn’t think another thing of it about a Week goes by, he calls me back up. He goes, did you call Angela Williams? I go, oh, no, I’m too busy. He goes, I really want you to do that. Give her a buzz. I’m like, yeah, okay. Couple more days go by. I walk into our house, and he was standing there, and he goes, hey, did you call Angela Williams? Because the meeting’s coming up. I said, dennis, what don’t you get about this? I’m not doing that. You want me to stand on a stage with people looking at me and talk about insurance? Are you out of your mind? I don’t know anything about insurance.
I hate insurance. All I know about insurance, my father still pays my car insurance. I’m not doing that. I am never doing that. I hate the thought of doing that. And one more thing, Keith, I ain’t doing that. And he looked at me with this look he used to get. And he said, it’s okay, honey. I’ll get someone else’s wife to help me build my business. So that’s the day I joined Al Williams, Where I’m making a joke out of it. And I tell this story a lot. I’m going to be dead honest with you guys. I hated his guts. I did not want to do it. I mean, I was almost, like, ready to get a divorce. I’m like, why the hell do I have to do this? This is your thing, not my thing. I don’t want to do it.
But he made me do it. He made me get my insurance license. He made me get my securities license. He made me come to meetings. He made me run the partners thing. But then, all of a sudden, something miraculous Shelley happened. I started to listen. I had to go to meetings. I started to listen to speakers. I started to realize what we did. I started to realize that what we did was not about either driving a Chevy or driving a Ford or using Palmolive or using Dove. None of that crap matters. I started to realize that what we did, buying term and investing the difference versus whole life, changed people’s entire lives. Because when you wake up in the morning, you got a guy who you sell your policy to, and they don’t have to worry about, how am I making my house payment?
How am I making my car payment? How am I sending my kids to school? How is Susie getting piano lessons? How am I helping my parents when they retire? How am I tithing to my church? How am I giving to the charity of my cause? When a person doesn’t have to worry about that, you just change their entire life and when I realized that I had the power to do that, I for people, then I became a crusader and you couldn’t stop me. And now you had Dennis Schechter, who felt that way, and his wife, who felt that way. Two people committed to each other now, committed to a common goal. And our hierarchy caught fire. Our business exploded. And were making over a million dollars a year in seven, eight years. We joined in 81, and by 90, were making America million dollars.
That’s what this company will do for you if you let it. So now here I am in this mode of super excited, super turned on, wanting to recruit every single person I ever met in my life, right? So I call up my cousin. Those of you have heard this story. You know, I’ve changed her name because they say, you know, on tv, they say, we’ve changed the name of these people to protect the innocent. Well, I changed her name to protect the ignorant. So I’m going to call her Cousin Mary Jane. So I go over to Cousin Mary Jane’s house and I sit down, I got something to tell you, Carol. This is the best thing since sliced bread. Oh, my God, we’re making so much money. We’re saving so much money. The people we recruit are saving so much money.
The people we hire are making so much money. And she looked at me and she got like this glaze over her eyes. And she kind of pushed herself away from the table. I will never forget it. And she folded her arms, Keith, which is always a bad sign. And she said, money, money, Patty. That’s all you’re talking about. Don’t you know there’s more important things than money? Seven minutes that ain’t happening. I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I do, Cousin Mary Jane. You know what’s more important to me? God. And you know what I love Cousin Mary Jane? I love when I go to church on a Sunday and the pastor says, oh, the van we have for Meals on Wheels broke down. We’re going to take of days, a couple collection.
I love going to him after the service and saying, you know the money you collected, use it for something else. I’ll buy the van. That’s more important to me. And you know what else is more important to me? My mother and father. And you know what I love Cousin Mary Jane. When my mother had full blown Alzheimer’s, I didn’t have to put her in a home. I didn’t have to put her in an even really good home. She got to stay in her Own home, Joyce, which Dennis and I have built for my parents on our property with a full time person. They’re taking care of her. That’s more important to me. You know what’s more important to me? My daughter. I love to travel. And you know what I love? I love.
Since my daughter’s brand new, I’ve been able to take her all over the world on millions of trips. She’s been to over 45 countries. She’s only 32 years old. That’s more important to me. And the charity of my choice is more important to me. And I’ve been able to fund the Schechter Family Charitable foundation with a lot of money. And now every year, I don’t get to put $100 in the Salvation army kettle at Christmas. I get to write out a four or five figure check and make a big difference. That’s more important to me, Cousin Mary Jane. But here’s a news flash for you. All of that takes money. I didn’t write that rule. That’s the way the world works, guys.
And you either understand it and use it to your advantage, or you could put your head in the sand like the ostrich and the lion’s gonna come and bite you in the ass. Anyway. You gotta know what you’re doing. You know, what’s money all about? What’s it for? It’s for good times and bad. And here’s another newsflash. Bad times are coming for everybody in the room. That’s not a negative. That’s the way the world works. Nobody goes through life unscathed. I know that personally. And one of my dark times came in around 2000, 2001. My late husband, Dennis Schechter, got really sick. And I’m positive. And I kept saying to him, honey, you’re going to make it. Glass is half full, not half empty. But then there came a point where we’re also realists. And we knew he wasn’t going to make it.
What kind of a conversation would most husbands and wives have then? It would be something like, honey, we gotta talk. You’re gonna have to sell the house. You’re gonna have to go get a job or you’re gonna have to go get another job. Forget about Johnny’s baseball camp. Forget about Susie’s piano lessons. Forget about helping your parents when they retire. Forget about tithing to the church. Forget about giving to the charity of our choice. In short, folks, it would be a money conversation. Dennis and I didn’t have to have a money conversation. We Talked about how great our life was, how much we loved each other. Oh, we had a money conversation. He told me we had an eight year old daughter at the time. He said, spend the money on you and her. That’s what I worked for.
That’s the kind of money conversation we had. And here’s the most important part of the speech. Why were we able to have that conversation? Did I invent the wheel? Did we invent penicillin? Can I sing like Whitney Houston? Because we bought into a system and we believed in it and we condensed our time frame. We didn’t stay district leader for six years like some people do. We killed ourselves like Keith and Danielle Otto did, like Shelly and Tony Narain did, like Glenn and Zio have done, like all the leaders have done. We busted our butts. We put in 18 hour days, seven days a week. But for 18 years, folks. 18 Years from the day Dennison joined the company to the day he died. Well, he died 20 years later, but he was sick for two years. So don’t count those last two years.
We put in 18 years of sweat equity. And because we put in 18 years and big deal. What’s 18 years in relation to what most people put into a business or into their work life? Right. 18 Years old when he died, I closed my bay shop. I have not recruited a person. I recruit people, but I give them away. I have not made one sale. And since he passed away in 2002, now I am still the 9th highest paid person in the entire company. How is that possible? I want you to clap. I don’t want you to clap for me. I want you to clap for a system that allows that to happen. And here’s the very best news. We all have the exact same contract. Nobody gets any special treatment or preference.
I was on Facebook just recently because I’m always on Facebook, it seems. It’s terrible. And you know, they have these stupid games, Keith, on Facebook. And some of them, like one was like, you’re going to a desert island for the rest of your life and you can only get one food a day. What would it be? Stupid crap like that. And I look at all this. So I come to this one and it was describe your paycheck with a movie title. I thought, that’ll be interesting, Roy. So I started to look through them. There was hundreds of answers and here were the more common descriptions or the more common movie titles. So this is describe your paycheck with a movie title. Number one. The Hunger Games, Gone with the Wind, Taken. The Departed, the Crying Game, the Joker Scream, Dumb and Dumber, Mission Impossible.
And the last one, really, I couldn’t believe. And this came up more than once, Better Off Dead. And I thought to myself, you know, this is interesting because not one person in the over 300 answers that I read answer the question the way I would answer it, the way Keith would answer it, the way Tony and Shelley would answer it. I would say, life Is Beautiful, the Best Years of Our Lives, Singing in the Rain, Roman Holiday, Vacation, the Best of Times, It’s a Wonderful Life. And they need to make a movie called Residual Income. That would be my favorite movie. Let me end with this. There was this guy, he was a math genius, and he wanted to take a class and even get better. So he signed up at MIT and he took this one math class that was once a week.
It was for only really brilliant math people. So he went to the class, but he fell asleep. And when he woke up, there was an equation written on the blackboard. So he’s like, oh, crap, I missed this whole thing. But let me write the equation down. This is obviously our homework assignment for next week. So the following week and the whole week. So he’s working on this assignment, and it’s like the hardest thing. He just couldn’t solve it. He worked on it. He worked on it. Finally, the night before the class, he solved it. So he goes to the class the next day, and he goes to the whole hour class. The teacher’s talking, the professor, he’s up there talking about stuff. He never mentions the equation. So finally, near the end of the class, the guy raises his hand.
He goes, professor, you never mentioned the equation, our homework assignment. And the professor goes, what are you talking about? He goes, well, that equation that you wrote on the board last week for homework. He goes, that wasn’t your homework assignment. You fell asleep. He said, that was. I wrote the equation that no one in the world has ever been able to solve. And the guy said, well, I think I solved it. And the guy laughed. Turns out he did solve it. And he got the Nobel Prize in mathematics that year for solving it. And here’s my question to you. He never heard anybody say it was an unsolvable problem. He was asleep during that part. What would you do if you didn’t hear other people tell you couldn’t do it? Like Ray Costello said his uncle told him, you’ll never do it.
What would you do if you never had that in your mind that you knew you could do this? It was just a matter of getting it done and as fast. How fast can you do it? But nobody ever told you couldn’t do it. What would you do? I want to challenge you to go out and do something unbelievable. So at the next meeting, Keith has you up here being the speaker to show that you can turn your life around in three months and six months. And when you’re up here doing that, you know where I’m going to be? In the first row, clapping the loudest for you. Thank you.
