Executive TLDR
The fundamentals that worked 20 years ago still work today.
Short-term sales focus creates long-term frustration.
Recruiting is the path to sustainable growth and RVP.
A strict schedule is non-negotiable.
The number of calls you make determines your success.
Quitting before the breakthrough creates “shoulda, coulda, woulda” regret.
Video Summary
In this direct and practical leadership talk inside Primerica, Joseph Catanzarite breaks down exactly how to become a Regional Vice President (RVP). His message eliminates excuses and simplifies the process: the path to RVP today is the same as it was 20 years ago — consistent fundamentals.
Joseph begins by addressing a common misconception. Many newer representatives believe that social media, technology, and modern communication have changed the business. While tools have evolved, the core activities remain identical: schedule your time, recruit consistently, market the opportunity, and make calls daily.
He outlines a clear promotional timeline:
Get fully licensed.
Promote to District Leader.
Promote to Divisional Leader.
Promote to Regional Leader.
Promote to Regional Vice President.
According to Joseph, there is no reason someone cannot move through those ranks within months if they focus with urgency and discipline.
Short-Term Gain vs. Long-Term Pain
Joseph introduces a powerful mindset shift:
Short-term gain equals long-term pain.
He compares hourly wages to short-term gain — you get paid for showing up today, but decades later you may look back wondering where your life went. In the business, the equivalent short-term gain is focusing only on sales commissions. Sales provide immediate income, but recruiting builds long-term residual income.
He contrasts that with the real formula:
Short-term pain equals long-term gain.
The short-term pain includes:
Recruits quitting.
Rejection.
Frustration.
Temporary setbacks.
But if you persist through those moments, the breakthrough recruit eventually appears — the one who builds momentum and changes everything.
Avoiding the “Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda”
Joseph warns against becoming a “shoulda, coulda, woulda” leader. He shares a vivid example: someone recruits 100 people who quit, becomes discouraged, and walks away. The very next conversation they would have had — recruit number 101 — could have been their future RVP. But quitting cost them that opportunity.
Persistence, not perfection, determines long-term success.
The Non-Negotiable: A Schedule
Joseph emphasizes that no one builds a serious business without a schedule. Every area of life must be scheduled:
Work time
Family time
Church or personal commitments
Prospecting
Appointments
Training
Without a structured calendar, growth becomes accidental instead of intentional.
The Core Activities
To reach RVP, Joseph simplifies the formula into daily actions:
Market the Opportunity (IBA)
Invite people to explore the Independent Business Application.Market the Services
The business only pays when products are sold.Make the Calls
He challenges the audience to check their recent call history.
The people making the most calls are the ones walking across the stage.
Technology and social media can enhance growth, but they do not replace activity.
Leadership Mindset
Joseph closes with two leadership principles:
Great leaders use past mistakes as knowledge, not bitterness.
The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your decisions.
Becoming a Regional Vice President is not about luck. It is about decision-making, activity levels, and the discipline to persist through rejection.
His final message is clear:
The path is simple. The work is straightforward. The question is whether you will decide to do it consistently.
FAQs
Can someone reach Regional Vice President quickly?
Yes — if they are fully licensed and move through promotions with urgency and daily activity.
What is the biggest mistake reps make?
Focusing on sales instead of recruiting.
Why is recruiting more important than selling?
Recruiting builds long-term residual income and leadership depth.
What causes most people to quit?
Rejection and recruits quitting early in the process.
How do you prevent becoming a “shoulda, coulda, woulda”?
Stay consistent through discouragement.
What is the most important daily activity?
Making calls.
Does social media replace prospecting?
No — it enhances it, but direct outreach is still required.
Why is scheduling essential?
Without structured time, activity becomes inconsistent.
What determines promotion speed?
Licensing, recruiting, production, and consistent activity.
What ultimately determines success?
The quality of decisions and the willingness to act daily.
Glossary
Regional Vice President (RVP)
A leadership position responsible for building and leading a large organization.
IBA (Independent Business Application)
The application that allows a recruit to begin building their business.
Short-Term Pain
Temporary rejection or setbacks endured for long-term growth.
Residual Income
Ongoing income generated from a growing team or client base.
Promotion Ladder
The advancement path from representative to RVP.
Activity Metrics
Measurable actions like calls made, invites sent, and appointments booked.
Decision Discipline
The ability to make consistent choices aligned with long-term goals.
Transcript:
All right, awesome. Great to see everybody. Thank you, Joe and Denisa, as always, for putting this together. And let’s see which way I am. Not the best tech, as everybody knows, so we’re going to make sure. All right, perfect. So if you didn’t catch it, my name is Joe Catanzarit, and I thought it was a good opportunity to kind of teach a little bit how to get to regional vice president. So raise your hand if you’re not a regional vice president. Raise your hand if you have no idea what a regional vice president is yet. Okay? All right. There’s a few of us here, and that’s okay, right? Because we all started in the same exact position, right? Which is why there’s some people up here teaching. Just like when I was sitting in the same seat, I said, I remember years ago, there was people in here and they were teaching about how they not the regional vice president, right?
When they’re like, hey, this is what I did. This is what I did. I’m like, all right, well, that was, like, 20 years ago. I don’t give a crap what you did 20 years ago. What did you do now? I need to hear from somebody that just did it now, right? Because I was like, oh, well, it’s different, right? There’s social media, right? And there wasn’t that 20 years ago. And people still use their home phones 20 years ago, right? Now there’s cell phones, right? And there’s different ways to get in touch with people. And I remember I always wanted to hear from someone that was like, all right, they just did it now. And then when we finally got there, you know what I realized? All the crap that they were talking about that they did 20 years ago, it’s the same crap that you need to do now to get there, right?
So why do I tell you that? Because the excuses you’re putting in your head, it’s your excuse. It’s not what is keeping you from getting there, okay? Because it’s the same stuff. Everybody got to the position they needed to, and they had to go through the same stuff. Maybe it was just a text instead of a phone call. That’s the difference. Okay, so how to get to RVP in 2023, maybe you’re a month or two behind and a little bit beyond, right? But I want to put you here because if you’re not there yet and that’s what you’re looking to do, I just want to outline it out for you, how you can get, no matter what position you’re at right now, how you can get the regional vice president by the end of the year. Now, you do have to be fully licensed, okay?
So you’ve heard people talk about that. You got to get your licenses, but if you’re a rep or senior rep or don’t even have your license yet, you can still get promoted to District leader by September is over. Then the next month. What do you got to do from there? Get promoted again and you get promoted to divisional leader, right? In October. Then November regional leader. December, regional vice president. There is no reason we don’t have more than two rows of regional vice presidents here the next time we do a school, right? Because now everybody knows that you can get there, but how do we get there? Okay, so how do we get to that position? This is my talk. Wasn’t just all yelling, right? That’s what happens when you hand an Italian a microphone, right, Anthony? Right? You just start yelling, right? So short term gain equals long term pain.
I didn’t type it wrong. Maybe I sent it to Joe and he typed it wrong, right? Now, we all know the saying, right? But this is short term gain equals long term pain. What is short term gain? Short term gain is every single hour. We go to work for an hour. You go to your job, right? Who has a job on Monday? Show up there, you get salary Allary rage, right? You go for an hour. That’s a short term and you get a dollar or a few dollars or whatever your dollarly pay is. That’s a gain. And then you do it the next hour and then the next hour and the next day and the next week and the next month and the next year and the next decade. And then all of a sudden, you’re 65, 70 years old. You turn around, you’re like, where did my life go?
That’s the long term pain that every single person that we walk by every single day is living. And we can change that. We can change that for people, right? Because, listen, nobody wants to go to work every single day, no matter what they’re making, no matter how much they, oh, I love my job, right, guys? That is the short term gain. What they love is knowing that if they show up for an hour, they’re going to get a dollar, but then they got to do it again and again and again until they’re miserable, complaining on Facebook, right? Like everybody is, and they’re looking for something to get them out of it. What’s the short term gain in Primerica? The short term gain in Primerica is focusing on the sale, not focusing on the recruit, right? In Primerica, right? We’ve all heard this. If you’ve been around the business for like, three months, aim for the recruit miss with the sale, right?
What does that mean? Listen, every person you sit down with, you want to help, and it’s great when you could sit down with a client and you sit down with them for like an hour and you make like $1,000. Listen, that doesn’t get old, right? That’s not a bad thing. But if you’re focused on the sale, which is the short term gain, you’re not going to have the long term gains. The only way to get to the long term gains is if you’re focused on the recruit so you can have the long term gains in the future, right? So now what is the saying? What is the real saying? Short term pain equals long term gain, right? That is what we’ve all heard. So what is the short term pain in Primerica? It’s getting the recruit, then it’s getting the next recruit and they both quit, right?
It’s getting another recruit and they quit. And then you call your upline and you’re like, oh, my goodness, I just don’t know if I could do it, right? And you’re like, they were the best person in the world. They were meant for this business. No, they weren’t meant for this business. If they were, they wouldn’t have quit. You were meant for it because what you did is you called your upline and said, hey, this person quit, what do I do now? Right? That quitting. Them quitting is that pain that you go through. But you’re always going to have the long term gains after that. Because if you get through it, what’s going to happen is you’re going to get that one recruit that sticks around and breathes a little bit of fresh air back into your life, back into your business, right? And we’ve all had times in our business when that was right.
Like Mike, I remember we had a time I was frustrated in the business. All of a sudden you came along, right? And then there’s another time when you’re frustrated in the business and the next person comes along, right? And all of a sudden you’re like, this business is so easy, right? But what happens sometimes is we become a shoulda coulda woulda. What’s a shoulda, coulda woulda. Now listen, some people in the business get very lucky. Maybe it’s their first recruit that comes aboard. That person like skyrockets their business. They get the regional vice president. Then there’s the other people in the business, right? You recruit 100 people, but you called your upline every single time. And then the 101st person becomes your regional vice president that you promote and build a residual income for the rest of your life with. And then there’s the other person.
This is the shoulda coulda woulda. They recruit 100 people. They quit. They leave their office that day, they walk down with the head down, and as they’re walking around with the head down, a person walks by them that they usually would have had their head up, maybe talk to that person. And that person that walked by them would have been their 101st recruit. That person would have been their next regional vice president. But because they quit, they missed out on and then they go, I should have stuck around. I could have, I would have. But they didn’t. Don’t be that. So this is what you need to do. Regional vice president. This is the crap I was talking about that worked 20 years ago. That worked 30 years ago, that works today. You got to make a schedule. Listen, if you are trying to build the business and you do not have a schedule, you are not going to build the business.
It’s as easy as that. If you do not have a schedule to what? To everything. I remember being in the business and trying, like, brand new and I’m like, Paul, how did you juggle all this stuff? Right? Having a wife, having kids, having a business, having church, all these which, having a job. He’s like, Listen, schedule everything. Yes. He’s like, Schedule even time with Amanda when you’re going to hang out and just have your time, right? Because you want to schedule it. So then when you’re working, you’re only working. Then what do you got to do? You got to market the opportunity. What’s the opportunity? It’s the IBA Independent Business Application. You got to invite people to what we do and how we help families. Then you got to market the services because that is the only way we get paid, right? And then I know the big dreaded thing.
Make the calls, guys. That is the business we’re in, right? If you were in the restaurant business, you would have to make the food. We are in the phone calling business. You got to make the calls. Now, thankfully, 20 years ago, they didn’t have social media. We could use social media like Andy Orstead who 600 grand in five years, right? All through social media, as you saw up there with Jason Had on Psf media. But we got to make the call. So do me a favor, everybody grab your phone real quick. You grab your phone. Now, if you have a Samsung, I don’t know who you are, but if you have an iPhone, right on the bottom left, I think there’s a little icon with the phone. And if you click on that, there’s the recent calls, right? You see your recent calls. Click that.
And if you scroll through there, you can see how many recent calls you’ve made. You know, one thing I could guarantee you in this business is the people that have the most recent calls were the people that came across the stage earlier today. So if you want to guarantee yourself that you’re going to go across the stage at Kalahari in October 13 and 14th, you know what you need to do? Make the most calls. That’s it. This business is so simple if we do that. So I ask you, what changes are you going to make? What changes are you going to make in your business? What changes are you going to make in your life to get there? And I’m going to leave you with two quotes great leaders. Great leaders don’t lead with bitterness of past mistakes. They lead with hope and knowledge of the past, of information, greater decision making in the future.
What does that mean? It means that every person up here has gone through mistakes and they’re going to teach you what not. You don’t have to go through. Every person that you’ve had is here to help you get you to that next level. And then the last one is the quality of your life is based on the quality of your decisions. You hold your decision. It’s up to you if you want to make it happen. It’s up to you if you want to invite more people. It’s up to you if you want to get to the next motion. It’s up to you if you want to change your life. So, guys, let’s get there. Let’s get to the top. Thank you for your time.
