Ever feel like you’re stuck in a financial rut, doing everything you can but still not seeing the results you want? You’re not alone. Many reps find themselves tangled in outdated financial strategies, unsure of how to break free and truly thrive. But what if you could change that? What if you could rewrite your financial destiny and build a business that not only supports you but empowers you to reach new heights? That’s exactly what Joe Cardino dives into in this powerful session. He shares his personal journey of breaking free from traditional financial traps and how Primerica transformed his life. It’s raw, real, and packed with insights that could be the game-changer you’ve been waiting for. Watch the video below and discover the strategies and mindset shifts that can help you take control of your financial future and build a business that truly works for you. Don’t miss this must-see moment that could redefine your path to success!
Video Transcription:
All right, listen, I got stuff written old school on an actual book, not an iPad.
All right, first of all, I want to thank my wife.
35 years we’ve been married.
You’re awesome, Keith.
Thank you.
And Danielle, incredible school.
I want to just really mention the new studs and stud debts are coming up through the business.
You guys are just kicking some serious, but the numbers are incredible.
Give them all a round of applause.
That’s awesome.
And the Amazing Crusader team.
You guys are so.
You don’t even know how powerful you are.
I truly appreciate from the bottom of my heart everything you guys do and mean to us.
And I want to thank primeric.
It changed my life, changed my kids life, just changed everything.
And I’m so glad that Rob invited me to a meeting.
Rob’s a good budy of mine.
He’s not around anymore, but I’ll always be appreciative of that.
So what do we talk about today? I want to talk about life lessons I learned early on.
Actually, life insurance lessons I learned early on.
I’m to going start with a story about my dad and Rick, the insurance guy.
My dad was a great guy.
A lot of Yojis in the front row know him.
He was just fun life at a party when he passed away to over a thousand people at his funeral.
This is a guy who came over from Italy, never finished school, developed a little bit of a trade as a carpenter, opened up a construction company, was building homes, and he did pretty good.
He raised four kids.
We all went to college, two became an attorney, one became an NSD and always tried to do the right thing, but didn’t understand how to invest money, didn’t understand about mutual funds.
There was no Internet, there was no Susie Orman.
There was nothing you could watch on television.
So he wanted to do something.
And what happened then? What happened to most people, he met the whole life insurance guy.
Rick comes to our house when I’m a little kid.
I remember he used to come every year and he was slick.
He had a brand new Mercedes every year and he worked as I remember, I was like 13 or 14.
HE gave me and my brother tickets to see the New York Nets play at the Comac Arena.
The Comac arena was a barn.
I saw Dr.
J play there first time.
It was really amazing.
But the tickets must have cost $3 or $4, but to us it was amazing.
And he would talk to us all the time.
He prepped things.
And when my father said, I need to save money for retirement, he says I have the best program for you, a whole life insurance policy.
And then he said, well, I want to save money for my kids, for education, for college.
Because no one in my father’s family went to college.
He says, I have the best program.
A whole life insurance policy.
When I was born.
My father did $25 a month to a whole life policy when I was 18 years old.
I needed for college.
It was worth $2,100.
If he had just put in a coffee can, it would have been $5,400.
It was in a mutual fund.
It’d been $14,000.
So I didn’t know any better.
Most people didn’t know any better.
And then I got out of law school, and he says, listen, I got married.
He comes, he goes, listen, I have a special plan just for doctors and lawyers.
Oh, really? And he sold me a life insurance plan for retirement.
This is the best retirement plan you could have.
And then he came back next year and sold me another one.
And then he sold me another one.
And then he sold me another one.
And he would visit constantly.
He was a big shot.
He’d show magazines with his picture on the COVID I thought I had the real right insurance guy along the way.
And he sold it to my entire family.
All my uncles and aunts, all my brothers, all my cousins.
And he really had a really good thing going with us.
And we thought we had a good thing going with us.
Till I came to Primerica.
I came to Primerica, and the first thing I did was I brought my five policies to the meeting.
I said, joe, we got to fix these things, right? Here he goes.
I didn’t come here to sell life insurance.
I came here to build a business.
For six months, all we did was recruit.
Didn’t let us do any sales.
I got licensed right away, didn’t do any sales.
But he did show me what I could have had.
And he showed me how to analyze a policy.
And I’m going to show you how it really matters.
When it comes to whole life policy.
So this was my guardian life policies that added up.
There’s four things you got to know about premium coverage.
Cost per thousand.
And guaranteed cash at 865.
So I was paying $625 a month.
I’m age 33 at this time, by the way.
It was two years ago.
I was 33.
The cost per thousand was a dollar 14.
You take the premium, divide it by how many thousands.
It tells you what the cost per thousand is.
Just like meat by the pound, like gas by the gallon, right? And I had guaranteed cash value at 865.
Of 350,000, which sounded like a lot because I didn’t know what the rule is, 72.
So they show me what I could have, and I’m going to show you what today’s numbers.
So, you know, this is old.
Back then, it was different.
Okay.
A 30 year MBL policy for.
I want to do apples.
Apples of 550,000 cost me $79 a month.
Today.
If you have somebody who has a policy like this, you need to show them this way.
Right? On a yellow pad, you write this down and say, look at the cost per 1000.
If it was a truck driver I was dealing with, I would say, would you rather pay a dollar, 14 a gallon for gas or fourteen cents a gallon? They go, definitely $0.14.
It was a homework.
I go, would you rather buy chicken for a dollar, 14 a pound or $0.14 by the pound? And they understood that.
But then the caveat was, but wait, there’s no cash value here.
What am I to do with the cash value? Well, look at this.
If I took a one time investment of my current cash value was 28,000 the time, and I put the monthly savings of 546, that’s the difference between 625 and $79, right? I put that 546 away, I would have at 6%, 825,009%, 1.7 million.
Do you understand this? If I’d have same amount of money.
But what happens? I didn’t really have enough coverage.
So what they did was they gave me 700 on me, 200 on my wife, 25 on the kids.
It came out to $137 a month.
The cost per thousand was still the same.
And look at the savings.
Still a million and a half dollars at 9%.
Didn’t even use 12%.
Don’t clap.
Because let me tell you something.
You have family and friends who have policies like this.
There might be a few new people in here who have policies like this.
You need to understand, this is the biggest rip off in America today.
This is just a horrible product.
And my father ran into a horrible guy.
And what happened was finally Joe said we could do policies.
And the first policy we did was at my house he came over with.
First he said, does your wife make raviolis? I’m like, what? He made an appointment and placed a food order.
At the same time.
He said, could she make raviolis and meatball? I go, I tell my wife that.
She goes, what? I know.
He says that.
And he pulls up with a limousine and he gets out with Jay and Rob, my two uplines, and he does the presentation, the circle represent.
I’m excited.
I just want the insurance.
I do the insurance.
Roy Lipson calls me next day, goes, hey, I hear you’re field trained.
I’m field trained.
We had an appointment with the guy who made a ton of money.
Let me tell you the story.
So Joe Wentzer takes a presentation.
Never see.
He opens it up.
He goes, this circle represents your income.
I’m like, oh, my God.
He’s reading upside down.
Like, everyone in primary learns to read upside down.
But what you don’t see, I’m, like, amazed.
He goes through the whole presentation, and I said, all right, I’ll take it.
And we do the life insurance.
So Roy goes, hey, I hear your field train.
I have an appointment with Bob Perez.
He’s the vice president of NBC.
He lives in a big mansion in Scarsdale.
He makes a ton of money.
We got to be there tonight at so I never want to never show doubt, fear, or hurt, right? I’ll go there.
So I go, I meet Roy outside the place, and I just have this presentation.
I saw it done once.
So we meet this guy.
He sits down.
Roy’s carrying a shopping bag.
I go, what’s in the shop? He goes, I got the Walkmans for my team, the recorders.
I go, you can’t bring that.
No, I’ll ask him.
He goes, do you mind if we record this and we sit down? I’m nervous, right? I’m, like, sweating.
I’m trying to be cool.
He goes, no.
He puts 20 Walkmans on the table, the kitchen table like this.
And I’m going, oh, my God, what is he doing? Oh, my God, what is he doing? So I go to there.
I go, the name of our company’s prime.
Keith goes, wait.
Roy goes, wait.
He goes, I got to turn it.
I’m like, oh, my God, I got to do this.
So I open the presentation.
I go, this circle represents your income.
And I could see Roy look at me like, whoa.
It was the worst presentation ever done in Primerica history.
And at the end, the guy goes, I’ll take it.
I was like, holy crap.
He said, I’ll take it.
I go, he slides the application to me.
I go, I didn’t come here to write yours.
I gave it to build the business.
That’s what Joenston did.
And I slid over to Roy, and Roy filled that out.
So at the end of the meeting, thank you very much.
Appreciate that, Mr.
Brett Balla.
He takes the shotgate, puts next to the table, and goes like this with all the Walkmans and he all fall in a thing.
And I was a district leader that month.
We did 30 by 30,000 from a crappy presentation because we had hired so many people.
I wrote 15,000 my first month in the business because everyone had to come to me because I was the recruiter to do their insurance.
They’d been waiting.
So the next time we had the training, that Wednesday, I told that story, and Joe said, okay, everyone get their policies done.
So everyone came up to me and said, hey, can you do my policy now? I says, I didn’t come here to write insurance.
Came here to build a business.
And Joe looks at me, all right? He sits everyone at the tables.
He goes, all right, here’s the application.
Goes where it says, name.
Write your name.
And about 18 policies got filled out.
And I just went around.
I signed each one because recruiting was the focus.
So let me get back to this here.
So now it’s time to call up Guardian and say, I don’t want the insurance anymore.
I get a call back from Rick.
Rick’s like, you are making a big mistake.
What? Primerica.
Oh, my God.
Don’t deal with those people.
He goes, I know you since you’re a kid.
I need to meet with you because you’re making a big mistake.
And I said, I really tried to avoid it, but I says, all right, come to my law office.
I wanted to meet on my turf.
Come to my law office.
So we had an appointment to meet my law office.
And tell you the truth, I was scared.
I was scared I was going to meet with this guy because I’d been in Primerica about eight months.
I’d been writing business for like two months.
This guy was like a big somebody in the insurance world.
And I was afraid he was going to show me that I missed something, that I got bamboozled.
I had people on my team.
I made sacrifices.
I gave up my Nick tickets.
Nick.
See, when they were good, I had a boat.
I sold it because you used it on the weekends.
We did meetings on the weekends.
Tony and arrange says, I went to five OD meetings a week.
Guess what? I was at every single one of them with you.
I started making a list of some of the places we did meetings at.
And I’m like, oh, my God.
I can’t even believe.
Because back then, Johan didn’t say, oh, I’ll rent a place or I’ll get an office.
When me and Ray and Roy and Tony wanted to do a meeting somewhere in Shelley, we pitched it on money together as districts and we paid the rent.
We did it everywhere.
We didn’t care.
We wanted to build.
So I just want to do.
If you are involved in any of these locations, please stand up.
The Terrytown Marriott, the New Yorker Hotel, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Uniondale Marriott, the College of Staten island, the Gregory Hotel in Brooklyn, the Grand Hyatt.
If you did meetings at Freeport with the stand up, how about Howard Beach, Merrick Westbury, the original Westbury office.
Bohemia, Oakdale, Stanford, Sheridan? Look, a lot of people had a little impact from then, and a lot of people still aren’t here.
But everybody else, you came from these Locations.
Every one of you guys, sit down.
Every one of you guys came from somebody who’s plugged into this location.
So here’s what happened.
So he’s getting ready to come, and I’m nervous as crap because this is the guy I looked up on Google.
If he’s still around, I think he’s like 80.
I’m not kidding.
Watch this.
That’s Rick.
That bastard.
But listen, he wasn’t.
Look at this.
He was the president of the Guardian Leaders Club, the President’s Council, Guardian man of the Year, Guardian Praetorian Award, member of the Million Dollar roundtable, life member, quarter to table, national, all this crap.
I’m a district leader.
I’m licensed for two months.
I wrote 20 policies by signing them.
This is who I’m going against.
So I knew it was going to be a battle.
I was getting ready.
I was getting pumped up.
I’m in my office looking at my notes.
I’m listening to Joe Enser, the appointments I got.
, , my secretary, busman to my office, Mr.
So and so’s, here I go tell him, wait a minute.
I get up, I roll my sleeves up.
I’m getting ready.
I’m going by term, investor difference.
I’m a lawyer, my law firm, right? And this is me behind the thing.
By term invested difference beats whole life every time.
By term invested difference, by term invested, difference, I’m pumping myself up because I didn’t want this guy to ruin my life.
I was scared.
He comes in with a stack full of spreadsheets.
I go, hey, how are you, Rick? Have a seat.
He sits down.
I go, he goes, first of all, let me tell you what you’re doing wrong.
You’re trying to compare apples and oranges.
I’m like, apples and oranges? I thought it was dollars and dollars.
Premium is premium.
Death benefit is death benefit retirement money.
So he starts telling me, and he’s trying to explain to me why paying more for less is better than paying less for more, right? And he’s trying, and I’m listening, and all of a sudden, I see a little beat of sweat come down his forehead.
I knew.
I knew I had him.
I sat there smiling like crazy on the inside, but trying to act Interesting on the outside.
And anybody remember Charlie Brown when the teacher was talking, was like, wah, wah? That’s all I heard.
Because while he’s talking, I’m thinking, oh, my God, I’m going to get rich.
Oh, my God, this thing really works.
Oh, my God, this is for real.
And at the end, he goes, so you’re going to switch back? I go, no.
He goes, how can you not listen to me? I’m the Guardian man of the Year.
I know what I’m doing.
You’re brand new.
He didn’t know his life at the time.
He goes, who told you all this stuff? I go, let me tell you something, Rick.
I’m licensed with Primerica.
I got the same license you have.
I know how this shit works.
Take your folder, fold it up, get the f out of my office, and never come back.
And as a matter of fact, I’m going to replace every policy you ever wrote with everybody I know in the next five years.
I must have replaced 25 or 30 policies.
I would have done them for free.
When I want an appointment.
And it had a Guardian policy, and it would have had his name on it.
I’m like, another one.
You could take those net tickets and shove them up your ass.
I didn’t need that shit.
I needed to build something big.
And the reason I’m telling you this story is that you are so powerful.
If you’ve been here for two days, you know, more than 95% of the people, these people think they’re fancy with these fancy policy.
They are just screwing people every single day.
And you could beat them.
You know why? Because you’re right.
When you’re right.
I want to end up this quote from a very learned person.
It was Christopher Robin telling Winnie to pooh this.
Always remember that you are braver than you believe, that you are stronger than you seem, that you’re smarter than you think, and you love more than you know.
You are so powerful, it’s not even funny.
Primerica is where it’s at.
See you guys at the top.
Love you all.
