Ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, watching others zoom past you in their Primerica journey? You’re not alone. Many reps struggle with commitment and momentum, feeling like they’re spinning their wheels without gaining traction. But what if you could change that narrative? What if you could transform your business by mastering the art of commitment and pushing through those tough days? Chris Achong dives deep into this topic, sharing his personal journey from humble beginnings to achieving incredible success. His insights are not just motivational; they’re actionable, offering a roadmap for anyone ready to elevate their game. This is your chance to learn from someone who’s been in the trenches and come out on top. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch Chris’s powerful session and discover the breakthrough tips that could change your business forever.
Video Transcription:
How we do it? How we do it.
Siding stuff, man.
Friday night.
Hey, do me a favor, man.
If everyone could stand.
Not yet.
Wait a minute.
I am so, and I know you see it, but these guys, they’ve been working their tail off.
Plus they got to deal with me every day.
I just had one RVP back that was crying because I didn’t recognize them for something.
So there’s a lot of drama that goes on behind the scenes.
But just do me a favor and give a big hand to the A unit hierarchy.
They’ve been doing, all the leaders, all the RVPs.
If you could just stand up and give them a big hand.
You saw them go across the stage today.
It was probably every speaker or every other speaker.
And there’s been a lot of work, there’s been a lot of fighting, a lot of tears, and I’m absolutely so proud.
I don’t get a chance to say I’m proud enough because we’re still in a growth phase.
When you’re in a growth phase, sometimes you can’t.
They say when you cry, it blurs your vision.
And so there’s a time to cry and there’s a time to fight.
And it’s not that I don’t want to see you cry, David, but at this stage, for you to get to where you got to get to, you can cry at like a half a million or something like that.
And trust me, it’s easier to cry then and get over it.
But right now, I need you to stay focused.
Right now, we need you to go to the next level.
When your family’s free and Financially independent, I promise you won’t be mad.
Okay? And so we’re on that stage right now, that growth path.
Everyone has a Valley story.
Everyone has a story about being in the Valley, but you can’t really tell that story.
Tell the story about you coming out of the Valley.
Stop telling the story.
It’s very unattractive, actually, if every time somebody say, how you doing? You just tell them all kind of negative stuff.
It’s not that your stuff is not important and you’re not going through something for real.
But the other day I was stuck in the airport.
I was going to Bahamas, 32 minutes flight.
I was stuck in the airport for 6 hours.
Anyone have been one of those flights? And it just drove me.
I was sitting there and I saw people going insane, mad and upset and just cursing or what’s going to happen to the plane? Is the plane going to crash? And I said to myself, you got to be very calm with things you can’t control and be extremely aggressive with things that you can’t control.
And the leadership team in the A unit hierarchy, there’s a lot of stuff we can’t control.
And trust me, a lot of us are going through all kind of stuff.
But, man, there’s not a more focused RVP team.
The leaders that are going to RVP that are underneath these RVPs right now, listen, you can’t be more proud from personal production, from leading for the front.
There’s not a better team right now that’s moving than the RVP team in the A unit hierarchy.
So do me a favor.
Just give them another big hand.
Thank you very much.
So we’re going to have a $200,000 a month conversation.
Who’s excited by having that conversation? Because when I first started in Primerica, I had A-5-A day budget.
And that budget, either that $5 was to buy tokens, which is Metrocard, or eat.
And so we would eat early in the morning, and then we would just use that $5 to be able to travel to the office and so forth, and then come back home.
And we’d eat late at 1112 o’clock, whatever it is, at night.
So that’s how we’d have to do it in the beginning, but that’s how it started.
Okay.
And so today we’re going to talk about a 200,000 a month conversation.
I know we got the great Keith Otter in the room and a lot of the leaders in the room that do extremely well.
But for what? Primerica.
From where I come from, Primerica.
And the stuff that Primerica gave me, I gave Primerica everything I got.
And everything I got, Primerica gave me.
That is a true story.
Like, day in, day out, we gave Primerica.
So when I see someone going through the pain and going through the fire, I don’t feel sorry.
I know the end is worth it, Fritz.
I know the end is absolutely worth it.
So whatever you’re going through right now, Orville Priya, it’s totally worth it.
That drama, those delinquent.
What do you call it? Those players.
What’s kind of plays in total disruptive players that’s in your base shop.
Deal them.
Because there’s a bunch of disruptive players here in the base shop.
We’re not going to get into that.
So this company pays.
We went from $5 a day, Keith, to 5000 a day.
I get paid now.
Is that insane? 5000 every single day? I think that’s insane.
What do you think? And we’re in the same business.
Okay? And so I’m going to break down some dollar amounts to you.
$100,000 a year.
For you guys that are licensed, $100,000 a year is only $274 a day.
So you must master how to make $274 a day as a representative or district leader that does one app.
Between $50 and $70, they’ll make $274.
So you do one app a day, you’ll make 100 grand a year.
Who’s excited about that? Okay? $200,000 a year is only $550 a day.
Remember, I told you I do 5000.
It’s only five.
To make $550 a day.
As an RVP, that’s one personal app.
As an RVP, that’s one personal app to make 200,000 a year, guys.
Okay.
Is it possible? Absolutely right.
And we all work at the same company.
My story, I started with no self context.
I’ll tell you my years, because we all go through different years.
My 1997 years, because it took me a little while to get my license.
My first recruit.
It took me six months to get my first recruit.
Is that crazy? And the guy was 87 years old.
He died two days later.
No, he didn’t die.
Some of you guys are laughing.
He passed a securities license.
You passed.
He did.
Okay.
Russell Payne.
Okay.
And Joan would have these leadership schools, and we would go to it, and, like, some of you guys came here alone, and we would go to these schools every single six weeks.
Joancy.
Every five weeks, it felt like.
And I’d be by myself, just hanging out.
It took six months to get, but I was on a row.
I got my first recruit.
He was 87.
I got my second route recruit.
She was this big.
So I had a recruit and a half.
You should have seen me at that leadership school, man.
I rolled in with my team.
It was me and my one and a half person, okay? But 1997, I had low confidence.
I didn’t believe in myself.
I didn’t come from money.
Everyone I saw, I would look at all the leaders.
They’d be doing meetings and stuff like that.
I would just be sitting in the room when they tell my story.
A lot of the guys that knew me from way back then, they said I would just sit in the room, and I would just have my tape recorder.
I was a student.
I didn’t talk to no one.
I didn’t do anything.
I didn’t have any guests.
I would just sit right there.
I had no confidence.
No self confidence about the business.
So when you have no self confidence, you got to do some major self improvement.
And so that was my major self improvement days.
Okay.
The junkie self improvement, not like self improvement, where you listen to, like, you read like, ten pages.
I’m talking about sometimes two, 3 hours a day.
Carlos.
I just met Hector LaMarck.
The last time I took a picture with Hector Lamarck, I think I was a district leader and he was in the HALC, and I took a picture with him.
I went backstage.
I was actually a security.
I don’t know if you guys saw that.
Okay.
I really thought I was a security in my head.
That’s a whole nother topic.
I’ve overplayed that role.
But I spoke.
I says, hector, the last time I took a picture of you, I was a district.
He says, how are you doing now? I was.
I’m at 1.4 million.
Hector, he was like, oh, that’s kind of good, actually.
But 1997 was my high commitment days.
I want to challenge everyone to make a higher commitment.
Stop running from commitment.
If you don’t make a commitment, then you can’t ask your people for a commitment.
The reason most RVPs don’t grow or most leaders don’t grow is they’re not willing to make a commitment, so they can’t ask their people for a commitment.
Commitment is so important.
If you start making a commitment to get to the office and get there early and leave late and do the things that’s necessary.
Rain Caracastella was the best example of a commitmEnt.
They sold everything.
They got rid of everything.
It looked like they was doing really well.
Now I know they really wasn’t.
Their office rent was five times what they was making in Primerica.
And they got the office like a big.
We were just like, yeah, we got a fancy office.
We didn’t know they was paying all the rent.
It’s amazing, right? So then there was the struggling team days, the coachable team player days.
This is all in 1997.
Coachable team player.
Not just the player.
I’ve seen hundreds of plays.
We got a bunch of players in our hierarchy.
There’s some of them that’s not going to be here in the next year.
And you go, well, they’re doing big numbers.
Players never last in Primerica.
Team players last.
If you’re never attached, if you segregate yourself, it’s just a matter of time before you run out of fuel, before you run out of power, before people start talking to you, people start wanting to associate with you.
You can’t segregate.
You got to stay with the team, right? So we had to be a coachable team player.
The struggling days.
No money.
No money to come to school.
I remember one time I came to a leadership school, and I slept downstairs on the sofa outside, and then I knocked at the door in the morning, I go, Ray, Carol, you know too many people in my room.
I need to use your shower.
And it was like, all right, Chris, just come on in.
Go use the shower.
Doesn’t matter how you start.
It matters how aggressive do you want this thing to change? Remember, no one cares about the Valley story.
They care about you getting out the Valley story.
So when I’m so aggressive and I’m so serious about this business, you have no clue how hard it is to get out of that rut.
We ain’t ever going back.
Who’s with me? We ain’t ever going.
So you got to take this serious, right? We went through those days.
I don’t believe in myself days.
Okay, then everyone passed me days.
This one hurts because there’s a bunch of people in the room that could really.
Everyone rain.
Carol could tell you, they can give you a list of everyone that joined the business.
I had 25 people that was licensed before I had 20 securities.
Licensed people, had people go to RVP that abroad in the business.
Everyone passed me.
It seemed like everyone.
Eddie G.
Came and passed.
Everyone just passed me.
But if you get serious and you do this thing, and then if you really take this thing serious and you stop believing in yourself, get ready, you’ll pass everyone back.
And we did.
We did pass everyone back.
And matter of fact, I got some guys that passed everyone.
I’m not saying that in a negative way.
I’m just saying that could be you.
Okay.
So everyone, the survival days.
Okay, those, man, just making it the number one recruiter in the base shop days.
That’s the days that you got to go through where we was the number one recruiter.
Not a lot of money, but we was the number one recruiter.
You got to go through that phase.
When Ray and Carol did 100, we had 51.
You got to be that number one recruiter in the base shop.
That’s part of your story that you got to be able to take with you forever, right? The whatever it take days.
The leadership.
The leadership days where you start learning leadership.
You start learning how to carry yourself.
And when your coach calls a play, you run the play.
We have more leaders in the A unit hierarchy that run plays.
We have a lot that don’t run the plays.
Okay? We have a lot that run the plays.
They’re leaders they’re very intelligent business people.
Like, they don’t fight the system, they go, this works.
So why are we changing it, right? Oval.
This works.
Why are we changing? Let’s just do what works, right, the work ethic and personally get it done.
Days like the RVPT, personal production, personal recruits, because you ain’t got a team yet, so you got to go knock all that stuff out and do you got to load up.
We got to go do another 5000, another 10,000 before the end of the month.
You just figure it out and you find a way to get it done.
Those are the good old days, right? The 20 X ten personal.
I think the solution to every problem in every RVP or every leader’s base shop is for you to get involved in your business.
So if it’s ever going down, it’s because your fault and you’re not involved.
That’s the only answer.
If you got involved with the first 20 recruits in your business, like, if Roy said today, he ain’t going to do it, though.
But if Roy said today, I’m going to get involved with the first 20 recruits in my base shop, I was never a big recruiter, but I was a big recruiter.
Everybody know what I’m talking about, right? It was not a person.
I didn’t want no one to get touched.
I did every recruiting interview, every one one, every op, every follow up.
That’s why I don’t do none now, right? The lonely days where you’re by yourself.
Okay, I did this in 2003, guys.
The 100% committed days.
I was the master copy.
2006 and 2007 takes about two years.
You could go produce.
We did a training on this a while back.
You can go produce 100 codes, but if your leadership is terrible, your habits is terrible, you got bad habits and people are watching you.
That hundred codes are going to be lazy and they ain’t going to do nothing.
But if you go get 100 codes and you get aggressive like a Fritz and Tiki, they go get 100 codes and they copy that.
Now you get an opportunity to get free.
So 2006 and 2007, we laid it on the line.
Almost every person in our hierarchy got recruited between 2006 or 2007, or they recruited them.
Isn’t that crazy? That’s where the hierarchy came from.
But we had to be that master copy.
Okay? I became the foundation for my brand.
See, you become the foundation and the brand for your business, then your people help you scale.
Your people don’t create the brand, you create the brand.
So you’re that brand in your business.
And so we had to be that brand in our business.
And then we brought people in, and then they scaled.
They’re the ones that should get all the credit for the explosion.
Okay, the big recruiting days.
Not recruiting like one or two, but recruiting like 100, 150.
Not for one day, not for one month, but for like five years.
That was the A unit hierarchy.
Five plus years.
Give them a big hand.
Yeah, absolutely.
They raise terror on this world.
We did it totally unprofessionally, but we did it.
Some of you guys remember, some of you guys are still hurt of how I talked to you in 2008.
Get over it.
Okay.
I’ve grown a little bit since then, okay? But you might not.
Okay? But that was just what it is.
Jay Z now is different than Jay Z back then.
You want the Jay Z now, but the Jay Z now would never do what the Jay Z back then did.
And so we had to do what we had to do.
So who cares? Primerica never stops paying you, no matter what anybody think who realizes that, right? The high volume of guests interview days.
High volumes.
Not no one or two guests.
You’re talking about 100 brand new guests.
We had a squad in 164 20th Street.
It was like clockwork.
Could you imagine having an office? 100 new guests.
Not people that work in the office.
There was about 150 of them sucking, but 100 new guests every single day in, day out.
The elevator shut down.
People got to walk up the stairs.
It was insane.
But went through those days, okay, the district lead of Factory Days, which we need to get back.
But just producing district upon district.
This is in 2008, the relationship building years.
I think most people, if they started to invest more in their business and relationship in your business, you would actually have a bigger business.
There’s no one that wanted.
That loved their people or wanted to be around their people and help their people grow more than I did.
Like, some people go, you make a lot of money.
I go, I 100% deserve those overrides.
I’m not saying that in a boasting way.
I’m saying because I really worked on it.
I really cared about them.
When they was down, I was down there with them.
There’s still all kind of crazy stuff that goes on.
Well, you’re going to spend the money.
I had a conversation with RP.
I stopped going to fancy dinners.
Only with your wife and kids.
SpenD some on your team, too.
Oh, you don’t like that? You have a beautiful house.
How come none of your team has ever been in it? I had a conversation with an RVP in Arizona, that’s exploding.
I go, that beautiful penthouse sucks because I’ve never seen none of your teammates in it.
They started having teammates in their penthouse.
Now they’re all over the damn TV show.
They’re like 600, 700,000 income.
Let the penthouse work for you.
Right? Oh, you never thought about that? Learned that from rain Carroll.
Okay.
The building relationship years.
The RVP days, 2003.
To the personal producer years.
Okay.
Keith didn’t want me to do the RVP meeting because I was going to say most people became a financial planner.
The personal producer days.
Yeah, there’s the personal producer days, but you can’t state it.
I thought I was going to be a financial planner.
At one point in Primerica, I went to RVP and became a financial planner.
Three recruits a month, making 10,000 a month.
Three recruits a month.
That sucks, right? The goal for number one years.
Man, I hope you get into this, man.
There’s a lot of RVPs in our hierarchy that have that itch, that number one itch.
Who’s ever had a number one in the company, that’s an itch that you never lose.
It’s like drugs.
You just always think about it.
They got that itch where they’re going for number one.
They can’t stand being number two, number three, or number five.
They got to be what? Number one.
Okay.
So went through those years of number one, 2008 to 2018.
The competition was war against everyone.
Out of the field in January.
See, if you do this thing right for those two years and you build those codes, we was out the field.
The truth is, we work primarily for eleven years, and we’ve been free since 2008.
Yeah, we still work.
And I’m the roost in my business.
I’m up the earliest.
I think most RVPs are too quiet.
I got asked a question the other night to a few people.
I says, pick five RVPs.
If you could only override five RVps, Tony, in this whole room, out of five RVPs, which five RVPs would those be? And people started naming names.
They gave me this name.
I would have this one.
This is why I would have this one.
And I go, they go, who’s your five, Chris? And it says, the first one is me.
And if the first one ain’t you, then you’re missing it.
I’m the rooster in my business.
I’m the most committed person.
Yeah, there’s a lot of leaders that’s committed, that’s doing a lot more.
But I got to instigate all that stuff.
I got to wake up.
I take full responsibility.
I wake up.
every single morning.
every morning.
Planning, strategizing, texting, harassing.
I really do.
Setting up training strategies, creating thinkings, all these different things that a leader is supposed to do.
That’s the phase I’m going through.
We’re going to create more million dollar earners than any other team in Primerica.
How sick is that? We’re a little behind, but it’s not me.
It’s the leaders.
I’m at that stage right now where I got to move out the way because they’re coming, man.
They’re coming full force.
It used to be Harvey was just number one all the time.
Now there’s a lot of other number ones that’s popping in.
This is where it gets a little insane, right? It really does.
Okay? Number one is always negotiable.
Take it easy, remy, okay? I mean, it’s not if you keep working, but if you ever stop, it’ll get snatched up.
Number one never dies.
It just moves to someone else.
And so that’s happening to the hiring crew right now.
So it’s getting a little insane, and the game is over, man.
So you ain’t seen nothing yet, but that’s a little bit of our story.
We had a lot of support from Ray and Carol.
The biggest part of our story was we got a chance to attach to Ray and Carol and Keat.
We wouldn’t have been able to build a business because we attached ourselves to Keat.
When there’s a power source, you don’t unplug.
When there’s a power source, you plug in.
We would just be relentlessly coachable to Keith Otter.
We’d go to his managed meet till we got kicked out.
Now we’re here.
But it was always, to what? Go to another level.
Same thing with Rain Carroll, too.
You got to stay close to your coaches, guys.
Who is your circle for the RVP? Who’s your circle? That’s going to the million in life, there’s a 33% rule.
I’m done.
33% of your time, you need to spend with people that you’re helping.
Go to the next level.
The problem is most of you Caribbean people and people like me and from Africa and stuff like that, you spend 100% trying to give, you just drain the hell out of your battery.
With that 33%, you don’t got to help the world.
You don’t got to save the world.
Carol told me that.
And then the other 33%, you need to spend with other people that want to go to RVP or other people that want to go to a million, that’s the other 33%.
Then the other 33% you need to spend with people like Keith.
Well, for me, anyway.
Ten times your income.
I just moved in a new building.
Keith.
I can’t wait to invite you guys.
Carlos, you were like this.
I saw pink shirts in my lobby.
I’m like, who the hell is these pink shirt people? And then when they walked away, the guy that says, that’s the coach of the Miami team, that Messi’s coach, he lives right here in the building.
I go, oh, shit.
Okay.
All right.
I still don’t know who he is.
So I saw him.
I tried to run up on him, but I was like, you know, I’m not doing that shit.
I’m not one of those.
So I was like, I’m going to see him where he walks to me.
I’m going to go, hey, how you doing, man? Good to see you.
I’m Chris.
Who are you? Something like that.
But life is awesome.
This.
Stick with Primerica.
The leaders.
You know what time it is? The leaders that’s in this room.
But you really got to get busy.
Go have your story.
We’ll see everyone at the top.
Thank you very much, Keith.
