Executive TLDR
Fear can either make you run or rise — choose to face it.
Lead from the front with personal production, not excuses.
Income growth is the true scoreboard of success.
Build distribution: recruit, sell life insurance, and securities.
Stay plugged into the office and team environment.
Communication, events, and camaraderie drive duplication.
Video Summary
In this high-energy leadership talk within Primerica, John Picone challenges the audience to redefine fear. Fear can mean “Forget Everything And Run” or “Face Everything And Rise.” The difference determines your results.
Picone emphasizes that opportunity is in your hands — but potential only becomes reality through action. He warns against staying “zero by zero” in production, reminding leaders that teams follow numbers. If you want growth, you must increase personal production first. Income is the scoreboard — if it’s not rising, adjustments must be made.
He outlines key disciplines for success:
Get to the office consistently.
Lead from the front with production.
Build full distribution: recruit, write life insurance, and sell securities.
Communicate daily with top leaders.
Post results publicly to create accountability.
Plug new recruits in immediately to avoid losing momentum.
Build camaraderie by breaking bread and doing events together.
The message is direct: financial growth requires urgency, accountability, and fearless execution. Face everything, rise above excuses, and build momentum with your own pen first — then duplicate.
FAQs
What does “Face Everything and Rise” mean?
It means confronting fear directly instead of avoiding opportunity.
Why is personal production emphasized?
Leaders must model activity and results for teams to follow.
How do you measure success?
By tracking income growth and production numbers.
Why recruit clients?
Clients already trust you and can become strong business partners.
Why is office attendance important?
Environment reduces distractions and increases accountability and focus.
Glossary
Personal Production – Individual sales and recruiting results.
Distribution – The combination of recruiting, life insurance sales, and securities business.
Zero by Zero – Having no recruiting and no production activity.
Duplication – Teaching others to repeat the same productive behaviors.
Camaraderie – Building trust and unity through shared events and experiences.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How’s everybody doing?
Speaker 2
That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about. What I’m gonna touch base on very quickly because I only have less than a second. It’s up already. But is basically, what is your fear? What is your fear? Is it forget everything and run? Is that what your focus is? Because that means you’re gonna forget your dreams, you’re gonna forget your family, you’re gonna forget your potential? Or are you going to look at it and say, you know what? Face everything and rise? Because that’s what you’re here for. You’re here for better. And you know what? God has you here for a reason. You know, your team members have you here for a reason. You’re here for a reason. So, everybody, you know what? Let’s just face everything.
Speaker 2
Face everything and rise to the top, because the potential is here, and you can get it. And on that note, this is a man who fears nothing, ever, and a person that has been living the dream and showing me what that’s all about. And I’m so thankful for the one and only John Pecan.
Speaker 1
Isn’t she beautiful? She’s beautiful, right? She’s mine. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the greatest, you know, the greatest opportunity on the face of the earth, as far as I’m concerned, right, when you have a chance, you know, to grow and operate your own business and be your own boss, you know, and set the stage for what you want to do in life, right? You can’t get it better than that, right? You know, people don’t understand, and they don’t realize what they have at the grip of their hands. You know, when I. When I. When I finally understood that, you know, I just. It just changed my whole world around. And, you know, I think as more and more people understand that, you know, that. That that’s when you really get in tune, and that’s when you’re gonna start to change your life, you know?
Speaker 1
Excuse me a little bit. You know, I’m moving quick. I’m on a time limit over here. Right. You know, you think they’d give the top personal producer another minute or two, but anyway, you know? Right? I mean, that’s. Hey, stats show. Stats don’t lie. People lie. Remember that. The bottom line. Stats don’t lie. Right, right. But anyway, you know, I’m here to talk to you guys about, like, you know, hey, you could be. You can make money with your own pen and build a team. See. See, what happens with that is, you see, you might get one or two people to follow you here and there, you know? But if you stay stagnant at zero by zero, you get people to follow that. That’s great. But you know what? You’ll have a whole team of zero by zero, and that’s not great.
Speaker 1
If you’re looking to change your life financially and you’re looking to make money, okay? If you’re looking to make money, you got to get off zero of any type either side. Okay? So the first thing I’m going to go over is, you know, listen, if you got an office that you plug into, get to your office, all right? No matter where it is, okay? You have to get to your office. Bottom line, all right? You know. You know, a lot of people get distracted if they’re not in the office. They’re doing all this shit, you know, they tend to talk to nonsense. You know, they get distracted by family issues and bullshit and whatever not, right? And then they come up with excuses of why and why not. I got teammates texting me why they couldn’t get here.
Speaker 1
You know, they didn’t have money for tolls or gas. If you made money, if you had money in your checking account, you wouldn’t have to worry about tolls and gas. You know, I told one of them, why don’t you just come over to 59th Street Bridge? There is no toll. You gotta leave a half hour earlier. Right, but that’s the first thing. This is the office today. See, we came from Westchester. We got people on the team. Are there panthers in the house? Are there panthers in the house? Right. You know, we got people that came all the way up from Dutchess County, Orange county. You know, that’s like 100 miles away from here. 100 miles away. You know, we got. You know, we got teammates that a couple miles away from here. And they didn’t come here, they came up with excuses.
Speaker 1
We got teammates on Long island also. Right, but this is the office today, and you got to get to your office, right? You got to be in the game personal. You got to be. You got to leave from the front without a doubt, okay? If you don’t leave from the front, like I said, you’re giving nobody nothing, zero. They got nothing to follow. Okay. I don’t care what anybody. What any toolbox says, they got nothing to follow. Okay? Number three, you want to build distribution, recruit life insurance and securities, okay? If you don’t do all three, you’re hurting yourself. Okay? If you do life insurance without securities, you’re hurting yourself big time. Okay? If you do securities without life. You may not be, you may not be hurting the client, right? You may. Because you know what? At least you’re giving them.
Speaker 1
You’re showing them how to save and accumulate money, right? But the bottom line is, right, you know, you gotta look to try to help them across the board. Your clients, you should look to recruit them. Okay? You know, we had clients that we recruited over the years. They’re in the business now. They’re here now. They’re here today. All right? Because we offered them the opportunity. We spoke to them, right? You wanna constantly keep talking about what you’re doing that’s positive. Constantly keep talking about it, right? Constantly keep talking about what works, right? If you got a system that works and you’re having success with it, and here’s how we judge success. Your income going up. If your income ain’t going up, you got to adjust something. You know, that means, you know what? At halftime, you’re probably tired or losing the game.
Speaker 1
You know what I mean? A team comes out at the second half, if they play the same way, they’re going to lose the game, they’re going to get blown out. Okay? So you gotta make some adjustments along the way. You gotta show and post what you do, okay? Every week, every Wednesday night, we post the leaders, okay, in our group, me, you know, who’s working and who’s not. If your name ain’t on there, you know, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not working. But you know what? You’re not one of the top five in each category. You know, that has something going on. All right? So, you know, we post it, we show it, and if it embarrasses people, so be it. We don’t care, you know? You know what I’m saying?
Speaker 1
The bottom line is, you know, if you don’t want to be embarrassed, then become one of the top five people. That’s the bottom line, okay? You got to get new people to plug in and buy into what you’re doing, okay? You, it’s, it’s, it’s like an emergency with new people, okay? If you don’t get them within the first couple of days, cancer is going to get to them and they’re not going to show up anymore. So you got to get to them early. Even if you blow them out, who cares? Okay? If you push them out the door, you know, we, my son recruited a guy last Saturday, and we offered to take him on appointments. He was like, I want to go all right? We threw him in a licensing class. All right, go get licensed. We’ll override you.
Speaker 1
We’ll override what you did. That’s right. No problem. You know, we’re looking to get people out there. We’re looking to get people a bonus. We’re looking to get people trained, right? See what we do. Right? That’s. That’s the best way. You want to communicate with everybody, especially your top leaders, right? You want to talk to them every day. Okay? You know, you know, there’s probably about three or four people that we talk to every day, okay? And those happen to be the three or four people that produce the most. Think about that. The people who don’t communicate with us or we don’t talk to, you know, for three, four days a week, two weeks at a time, you know, they got the poorest numbers. Okay? Events. You want to do events as a team, okay? You want to do events, you know?
Speaker 1
You know, maybe you pick an event, whether it’s a neighborhood event, a feast, a fair, okay? You want to do that with your teammates. You go out two or three years, or the team leader goes out with his or her teammates, right? You want to, you know, plan events and do events together so that this way, you guys can, you know, compete with each other, all right? Even whether it’s prospecting or, like, an event, you know, a church event, a fair, something, right? You want to do it together, okay? And lastly, right, you know, and I used to break, you know, Rayne Carroll’s chops all the time. You know, take me out to eat, pay for me, this, that, and the other thing. And Ray said, I can’t wait until you start paying for your teammates. And, you know. Right, right.
Speaker 1
And you know what? That’s all we’ve been doing over the last couple of years, right, picking up tabs for teammates. Right? You know, we sat down with a couple of teammates today. You know, they sat down with us. You know, we picked up their lunch tab, right? You know, if the other 20 would have came, we would have picked up their lunch tab, too, but I guess maybe they didn’t know about it, right? But the bottom line is you got to break bread together, right? You know what I’m saying? I mean, we break bread, right, with our closest teammates, you know, teammates that are willing to learn, right? You know, we have lunch with them, sometimes dinner, sometimes a breakfast, something, right? You know, you gotta get that camaraderie. I see that, babe. I see it’s all zeros, right?
Speaker 1
You know, you gotta get that I’m making sense here. Hey, hey. Who in here wants to learn how to make 50,000 with your own pen? This is what I’m teaching you. Okay? Anybody want to make 50,000 with their own pen? Come talk to me. If you don’t. Stay stagnant. Love you guys. Proud to be business with everyone.
