Executive TLDR
Self-Building First: You cannot lead a team further than you have led yourself. Transformation starts with personal habits, sacrifice, and radical self-improvement.
The “Jiffy Pop” Effect: Recruiting is a volume game. You must recruit masses of people to find the few who will stick and become the future leaders of your organization.
Friendship over Jobs: People will quit a job, but they won’t quit on a friend. Building deep, personal relationships with your team is the “glue” of a hierarchy.
The RVP Myth: Becoming a Regional Vice President isn’t the finish line; it’s when you need your upline’s coaching and the system’s environment more than ever.
Video Summary
Joe Cardino, a veteran Primerica leader, outlines a clear three-phase roadmap for moving from a solo agent to a massive hierarchy builder. He stresses that Primerica is a place to “redefine yourself,” regardless of your past resume or college background. The core of his message is that speed and quality are mirrored: your team will only be as fast, positive, or committed as you are.
[Image showing a three-tiered pyramid: Base = Build Yourself, Middle = Build a Team, Top = Promoting RVPs]
Cardino emphasizes the necessity of sacrifice, sharing how he gave up season tickets and a boat to ensure he never missed a Saturday training. He highlights the “mass recruiting” philosophy of mentors like Joe Ensor, noting that while systems have become more polished over time, the fundamental need for high-volume recruiting and field training remains the engine of growth. Ultimately, he defines an RVP not as a boss, but as a servant who clears the path for their team.
FAQs
What are the three basic steps to building a hierarchy? 1) Build yourself, 2) Build a team, and 3) Promote RVPs.
What does Cardino mean by “building yourself”? It involves commitment, radical self-improvement (reading, audios, affirmations), and sacrifice.
What specific sacrifices did Joe Cardino make? He gave up his Knicks season tickets and sold his boat to focus on building the business, especially on weekends and Saturdays.
Is Primerica only for people with a strong resume? No. Cardino states they don’t care about resumes or college degrees; they look for good people willing to learn and try.
What is the “Jiffy Pop” analogy for recruiting? Like popcorn, it starts slow with one or two “pops” (recruits) and then explodes as momentum builds.
What is the secret to keeping people in the business? Building relationships. People don’t quit on friends; leaders should know their team’s kids’ names and invite them to their homes.
What is the “Birds of a Feather” principle? You attract people who are just like you. If you want a positive, early-bird team, you must be a positive, early-bird leader.
What is the biggest mistake new RVPs make? Thinking they don’t need their upline anymore. Cardino argues you need your upline more than ever after being promoted.
Who are the “20 percenters”? The winners on your team who always show up, have a positive attitude, and are the first to win contests.
How should an RVP divide their time? One-third hiring directs/field training, one-third with the team as a whole, and one-third giving special attention to the 20 percenters.
How can a leader “pay back” their mentor? By winning. Cardino says the best way to thank a leader who poured into you is to go out and succeed.
What is the “Speed of the Leader” rule? The speed of the leader is the speed of the team; if the leader works “half-ass,” the team will reflect that.
What does Cardino say about routine? He suggests winners have a consistent routine, such as waking up at the same time (e.g., 6:37 AM) every single day, including weekends.
What is the primary role of an RVP? Not to be a boss, but to be a servant to their team.
What is the ultimate takeaway of the “Success begins with a fellow’s will” poem? Success is a state of mind; the person who wins is the one who thinks they can.
Glossary
Hierarchy: A large organization of agents and multiple RVPs under one leader.
RVP (Regional Vice President): The standard “ownership” level in Primerica, indicating an agent has built a team and reached specific production goals.
Field Training: The process of a senior leader taking a new recruit on actual appointments to show them how to help clients.
Directs: People that a leader personally recruited into the business.
Upline: The mentor or leader who recruited you and provides coaching and support.
Override: The management commission a leader earns on the sales made by their team.
Affirmations: Positive statements repeated to oneself to build a winning mindset.
Transcript:
00:01 Speaker 1 Hey. Hey. Hey, guys. Hey. Hey. How you guys doing? I love coming to these events because I see a lot of my close friends, some people from other parts of the country. There’s a special bond from especially a bunch of these people in the front that we came through the business together. I guess it’s like. Like if you’re on a championship team together or maybe four in a foxhole together, or maybe like, if you did time together, you know, I’m talking about is a special thing. Only you guys can relate to each other, and it’s exciting to be here. I want to thank my lovely, beautiful wife who is so critical to our business right now. Denise, thank you so much. We got some great RVP’s in here. We have Jenny Escobar, Maggie Padilla, whose numbers are going through the roof. Proud of her.
00:56 Speaker 1 Pat Solano, Bob Gerby, Dennis Cortez, Rick Pack, and Alita Flynn, who’s really doing a great job as well. The team as a whole. I was just talking to John debary. We had a leadership report. He says that our numbers are up. It’s like one of the best ones in the state of New York because we’re really up in every area and every team. So I’m really proud of that. I want to take Roy Lipson, who’s a great friend of mine. I brought him into the business. He helped us get to rvp. There’s always that one person team that really pushes and they help get us over the top. And we have some more repeats coming out of base in the next six to nine months. Martin Morales, Oliver Kuche, David Caro, and Don Comer. Bam.
01:32 Speaker 1 Now, you know, Primera is a place that allows you to dream again. And, you know, a lot of us have dreams. We were little. I had. You know, ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a jockey, and that just really didn’t work out well for me. I thought about winning a Kentucky Derby. It just. They didn’t have horses big enough. Ballet didn’t really work out either. But this place, you can do some great things. You can redefine yourself and you can become a new person, and you can just change everything. And you could change your family tree, what people think of you, what you think of yourself, what your family thinks of you, and what your kids do when people got emotional and married.
02:11 Speaker 1 Arizona was talking yesterday because he was talking about how other people he loved felt about him. And you got to understand, this is not just about the money. It’s about. It’s about Becoming the person you were destined to become. Okay? And this place allows everybody, no matter what your background is, we don’t care about your resume, we don’t care about your work experience, whether you did or didn’t go to college. If you’re a good person, you’re willing to learn, willing to try, we got a spot for you. Not only do you have a spot for you, we got a shot for you. A shot to do something big for you and your family. So when I talked to Keith the other day, you want to talk about building a hierarchy. And I’m like, I’ve built in a hierarchy.
02:44 Speaker 1 There’s so many things to be covered and building a hierarchy, you know, there’s little day to day stuff and do, am I talking to the RVP’s or I talk to the newest person? So I said, you know, let me just give you just three basic steps I think to build in a hierarchy. And number one is build yourself. You need to build yourself. That’s the first thing. We all want big teams, you all want to override people. So how do you build yourself? Number one, you want to commit. Look, we tell people eight to ten hours a week part time. You can build a business here, keep your full time job, no risk. Listen, that’s true if you want to come on board, make $500,000 a month.
03:23 Speaker 1 But if you want to build a hierarchy, you got to jump into the water, you got to be committed, you got to go balls to the wall. And that’s not a dirty expression by the way. You really got to really go for it and make that decision that this is what you really want. Now you might not be ready to make that decision. Day one, maybe just. I’m going to try it a little bit. Keith. Talk about making $500,000 a month and making 2,000amonth, feeling a little bit better about it. But you got to make that commitment. Number two, you need to self improve a lot. Some use more than others. Isla Mary said, when I was younger, almost every word began with an F that he said, remember he changed that.
04:03 Speaker 1 There’s some people in here, I’ve noticed that they came here, look like more from the street. Now they’re polished. They don’t. They don’t. They use the English language, which is a really good idea. They speak well, but if you’re not reading, if you’re not listening to audios, you’re not changing. You got to get better. You got to do things like affirmations, visualizations, scripting, stuff like that. It’s not just about reading and listening. You want to implement that stuff, you got to become the best person you can be. And the third one is sacrifice. You’re gonna have to give up some stuff to win it. Just. Anyone ever watch Shark Tank? Stop watching television. Go build a business. All right, just. But a lot of times they say, hey, listen, you know, how much did you invest into this? Did you.
04:50 Speaker 1 Oh, I still have a job. I do this part time that I interested in people like that. They want the person that says, I remortgaged my house. I took all the equity out of my mother’s house and my aunt’s house. I quit my job. This is everything. I’m all in. Right? I know when I joined the I had tickets to the Knicks. I was. That’s when the Knicks could play basketball. And most of the games on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And that’s what we did in meetings. I gave up my tickets and I had a boat. I had a nice boat and we live across the bay from Fire Island. And you know what? Used the boat on the weekends. I worked on Saturday from now on. You know, that was once I start. I never missed a Saturday. I work every Saturday.
05:26 Speaker 1 That’s just this. I got rid of the boats. It was certain. You’re going to sacrifice some time with your family. You’re going to sacrifice some time doing the fun things that you want to do. But what the hell have you done in your life that you’re proud of that didn’t take some sacrifice? Anything you think about you, the thing that makes you proud about something is not the end result. It’s the effort you had to put in to get to the end result. So the first thing you need to do is build yourself. Go next. Because this is a fact right here. If you want things to change, you need to change. Stop trying to change everybody else. I’m talking to you, you and you. You, not so much. You need to change. You can’t be the same person.
06:13 Speaker 1 You can’t hang out with the same people. You can’t do the same stuff. You got to start doing things that are different, you know, have a different routine, give you a good thing to do. Change. How about this? Get up the same time every day, no matter what day of the week it is. How about get that started. 6:37 every day, not oh, it’s Saturday or it’s Sunday. Every day. Get that routine. Start doing things winners do. So if the first thing was build yourself, the second phase is build a team who’s clicking. You guys doing a good job. Clicking back. I said, I don’t have a clicker. I said, I’ll just flex my pecs when I want to go to the next slide. So they got that good guy’s doing great back there. All right, there we go. Recruit.
06:57 Speaker 1 I mean, this is pretty obvious, right? You want to build a team, you got to get people. Just got to get people recruit. Who do you recruit? A lot of people. Everybody who knows most people are going to quit on you. It’s okay. But if you got recruiting going, some will stick and then some will follow you and they’ll get some people to stick and follow you. And before you know it’s. It’s like Jiffy Popcorn. That’s how this business is. You guys don’t remember? That was microwave popcorn. Now back in the day, we just have this pan. You put on a thing, you go like this on the stove. And it’s like, I think this one’s broke. It’s like five minutes on time. It was like one. I heard one. Oh, I think it’s still broke. I heard another one then. Right.
07:32 Speaker 1 That’s how Prime Erica is. Too many people stop like when they’re doing this number two field train. It’s funny, when we started with Joe Ensor, field train was almost like a dirty word. He’s just bring people. Don’t worry about the field training, Joe. Somebody’s got to make a sale. He goes, the sales will happen. Just trust me. I go, joe, what’s our system? He goes, I got the best system. It looks like there’s no system. But the reason that system worked is that we’re recruiting masses of people. Hundreds of people coming in at a time. Dozens of people. Everybody was a double digit recruiter. The first week people came on a Wednesday, they brought 10 people back on a Saturday. That wasn’t like today. That’s like a big giant deal. That’s what everybody was doing.
08:19 Speaker 1 And because Joe had us bring in so many people, he didn’t slow down the process. Now today it’s a little different. Now we have more products, we have more income come, we have bonuses for people. It’s set up to train people and do that. So sometimes you got to change that program with Joe. That’s was 23 years ago. Things a little bit different right now. People are more. They’re more educated, they’re more polished, they want to know a little bit more. So you got to educate them to feel training. The third one is build relationships. And I’m not talking about just in the office. You know, I’ve had a lot of people to my house. I know a lot of the leaders do who win. That’s. That’s part of going out to lunches, going to dinners, running contests, doing trips.
08:53 Speaker 1 You got to know who they are, the names of their kids become their friends. People quit on a job, but they won’t quit on a friend. They got to know you care. That’s the kind of stuff they got to want to. You got your team. When you get to the point where your team wants you to win more than you want to win, when they want to win for you, that’s, like, such a blessing. And you’ll find that’s a common thread with the leaders in the front because they pour so much into their team. The team looks for ways to pay it back. And the way you pay it back is you go and win. And when you win, that’s how we get paid back. Fair enough. Okay, so listen, on the next thing. Here’s the thing about building a team.
09:29 Speaker 1 Birds of a feather flock together. If you want a team that shows up early, comes to every meeting, does a lot of business, makes money, sees the big thing, has a positive attitude, guess what? You need to be all those things first. You can’t be miserable and hire a positive team that just don’t work. You gotta. You’re gonna recruit people just like you. So the first thing you want to do is change yourself. That’s what I talked about. Become the person you want to be, and you’ll attract people just like that. The third phase is promoting RVPs. And I know if you’re here for your first or second week, you’re a division district leader or you might not think this applies to you, but it absolutely applies to you.
10:14 Speaker 1 But when you go to rvp, the first thing I need to tell you is I’m flexing. Can someone hit a button? I’ll do the other one. All right, hold on. Stay plugged in. The biggest mistake I see, new RVPs. Do they think they’re an RVP? They don’t need their upline anymore. When you go to rvp, you need your upline more than ever. You got to stay plugged in. I don’t miss a thing. Keith never once had to call me up and say, hey, you coming to the leadership school? You’re going to be on the conference call. Are you coming to the RVP meeting? He just knows that I will be whatever play he calls, I will get that done.
10:56 Speaker 1 And some of the People have the most success are the ones that spend the most time with Keith on a daily basis on the phone. I know Tony and Shelley on a run to a million dollars. They would talk to Keith every single morning. I know Glenn Zeal talk to them all the time. And what million dollar earns. You heard Mary Arizon talk about how he coach, he gets mentored by some of the people in this room right here. You need leadership. When you become an rvp, it doesn’t stop. You need it more because you got to get that and transfer to your teammate. Please stay plugged into the environment. Stop getting off track. Stop thinking you don’t need the system. The system got you there, for Christ’s sake. Stay in it. All right, number two, identify the 20 percenters. Who are those people?
11:39 Speaker 1 You know who they are. I was on a TV show early on with Joe Ensor on EPN tv, and I know Roy was on the show with me and maybe a few other people. I think Tony might have been there and Johansen was having great results in New York in the early days. And they said, joe, it seems like everybody you’re working with is having great success. He goes, how do you know who to work with? How do you know who the winners are? He says, it’s easy. He says, they’re the ones that always show up. They always show up. That was my attitude from day one. I said, all right, I don’t know if I could do this, but I’m going to show up. And I was gonna have a positive attitude. And you got people like that on your team.
12:13 Speaker 1 So here’s what you do with that. When you’re an rvp, you spend the third of your time focusing on hiring directs and personally field training your people. You spend a third of your time with the team and as a whole, and you spend a third of time giving special attention to 20 percenters. They’re the first ones that are going to go to rvp. They’re the ones that win the contest. Those are the ones that came across the stage getting recognized. You know who they are. And if you’re in a bay shop, you’re not a 20 percenter. Guess what? You could change that right now. Right now. You could change your business right now about making a decision. And the last one is be the example. What I mean by that. Look, you got to be an example of winning.
12:53 Speaker 1 How can you cheerlead a contest if you’re not winning the contest? How can you talk about making money if you’re not making money? You gotta be somebody that proud to be on your team. You got to be somebody they respect. You got to be somebody that cleared the path for them. You got to be somebody that fights for them to want to go to battle. You have to be somebody have faith in you that you got them covered. You do that, you’re there for them. You know, being an RVP is not about being a boss, it’s about being a servant. And when you understand it, that’s when your business is really going to grow. So the last thing I want to say here is, look, the speed of leader is the speed of the team.
13:30 Speaker 1 If you’re doing this half ass, you’re not going to get a full ass purse on your team. You know what I meant on that one anyway, right? So I want to finish with this little poem that I wrote. No, it’s really serious. Not a serious problem. If you think you’re a beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don’t. If you want to win but think you can’t, it’s almost a sense you won’t. If you think you’ve lose, you’ve already lost. For out in the world we find success begins with a fellow’s will. And it’s all in a state of mind. Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger and faster man. But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can go. Believe in yourself. Go build a hierarchy. Let’s kick some butt.
14:19 Speaker 1 See you guys at the top.
