Executive TLDR
Master your presentation so objections are handled before they are asked
Make every conversation about the client, not about you
Use the Cash Flow Quadrant to shift thinking from active income to passive income
The Rule of 72 powerfully demonstrates compound interest and long-term investing
The Theory of Decreasing Responsibility explains why term life fits young families
Buy term and invest the difference mirrors what life insurance companies do internally
Record, critique, and refine your presentation to become a professional closer
Mastering fundamentals creates lifetime income and leadership growth
Video Summary
Jon Lavin teaches that success in Primerica begins with mastering the presentation. He emphasizes that a strong presentation should answer objections before they are raised and must be more engaging than distractions like social media or television. Lavin highlights the importance of recording and critiquing your own delivery to refine posture, tone, clarity, and confidence. He explains the Cash Flow Quadrant as a framework to help prospects understand the difference between trading time for money and building passive income through business ownership and investing. He reinforces the Rule of 72 as a powerful demonstration of compound interest and the dramatic difference between low and higher rates of return. Lavin also revisits the Theory of Decreasing Responsibility, explaining why young families need more life insurance early and more accumulated assets later, supporting the buy term and invest the difference strategy. He provides a simple, logical explanation of how life insurance companies themselves use term insurance and investments to generate profit, encouraging representatives to confidently explain the math behind financial decisions. Ultimately, Lavin’s message is that mastering a clear, simple, and repeatable presentation builds confidence, increases closing ratios, strengthens recruiting, and creates generational financial success.
FAQs
What is the key to closing more business in Primerica?
Mastering a clear, structured presentation that answers objections before they arise and keeps the focus on the client’s needs.
Why is the Cash Flow Quadrant important in financial conversations?
It helps prospects understand the difference between earning active income and building passive income through business ownership and investing.
What is the Rule of 72?
The Rule of 72 estimates how long it takes money to double by dividing 72 by the rate of return.
How does the Rule of 72 impact financial planning?
It shows how dramatically higher rates of return can multiply wealth over time through compound interest.
What is the Theory of Decreasing Responsibility?
It explains that families need more life insurance protection when debts and children are young, and more accumulated assets later in life.
Why does Primerica teach buy term and invest the difference?
Because term insurance provides affordable protection while investments build long-term wealth and financial independence.
How can representatives improve their presentation skills?
By recording themselves, reviewing their delivery, practicing consistently, and mastering proven scripts.
Why should presentations focus on the client?
Because financial decisions are personal, and clients respond best when the conversation centers on their goals and needs.
How do life insurance companies invest premiums?
They separate mortality costs and invest the remaining funds in diversified portfolios, similar to mutual fund strategies.
What is the long-term benefit of mastering fundamentals?
Strong fundamentals create consistent closing ability, leadership growth, recruiting success, and lasting income.
Glossary
Cash Flow Quadrant
A model that categorizes income into four types: Employee, Self-Employed, Business Owner, and Investor, highlighting the path to passive income and financial independence.
Rule of 72
A simple mathematical formula used to estimate how many years it takes for an investment to double by dividing 72 by the annual rate of return.
Theory of Decreasing Responsibility
A financial planning concept explaining that life insurance needs are highest when financial responsibilities are greatest and decrease as assets accumulate.
Buy Term and Invest the Difference
A financial strategy that recommends purchasing affordable term life insurance while investing the savings to build long-term wealth.
Compound Interest
The process where investment earnings generate additional earnings over time, significantly increasing long-term growth.
Passive Income
Income earned from investments or businesses that does not require continuous active work.
Active Income
Income earned through direct labor or employment, where money is exchanged for time worked.
Financial Independence
The state of having enough assets or passive income to cover living expenses without relying on employment income.
Transcript:
I just want to really share with you. You’re going to hear from Hector and how many of you were in the RVP meeting, right? How good was that? How good was that? So I really learned so much from Hector. Even though I was in the business before him, once he started to do what he did, I really started to pay attention. And I really. I thought of this business in a pretty simple way. And that was, can I learn to do the presentation in such a way that most of the objections were handled before they were asked? In other words, could I actually present, make a presentation that was interesting enough to hold someone’s attention and to ask enough questions where they would actually follow along and take action, where I could actually close business?
I could actually help them figure out what they wanted and help them get it? And so there were different parts of the process, presentations over the years that we’ve done, but I narrowed it down. I wanted to narrow it down for you and say, okay, here’s some pages of a presentation, some conversations that I think we all need to master. Now, look, you all have your own presentations. You all have. You do what your RVP does. But if you’re going to do what your RVP does, then do what they do. Like, do it exact. Like become a pro, become a master. You know, Anthony Hines is here today. And when Anthony Hines got in the bass shop, were using Omar Oropes presentation. And Anthony said, I’m going to learn that. And he listened to that thing over and over.
He put it on a tape recorder. He had like this big tape recorder. And he would sleep with the tape recorder. He’d listened to it all night. He’d listen to it over and over and over. And you all know that Omar has a little bit of a stutter. Anthony actually developed a stutter from learning that presentation. That’s how well he did. He told all the jokes. And that’s literally what I did when I started. I got a hold of a presentation of the most successful people in the business, and I listened to it over and I studied it and I wrote it out and I practiced it. And when I started, I was single. I didn’t have any of a market. So I learned my presentation doing interviews. I did a lot of interviews. I just did the present.
I just wanted to give it over and over. So when I finally got in front of a qualified prospect, it would be easy for me to help them make a decision because I wasn’t worried about me. See, your presentation has to be more interesting than the Internet. And it has to be more interesting than Instagram and tv.
You’ve got to be when you’re doing.
Your presentation, when you’re speaking to somebody, you got to be speaking right to them. And it’s got to be all about them. It’s all about them. It’s not about us. We’re just the messenger, right? So here’s a couple pages that I think are important to be good at. And whether you do the actual pages or not, these are conversations with questions. One of the things you can all do to get better at your presentation is audio yourself or video yourself doing your presentation. Those of you that work do presentations on zoom. That’s easy.
Hit record.
Watch it over. Watch yourself. Watch yourself. I’ll never forget doing a meeting once for Bill Whittle. And in the middle of the meeting, I was like on a stage like this with about this many people and I was talking and I was making about 800 grand a year when I did that. And I was watching the video of me doing that presentation later so I could critique myself. And all of a sudden in the middle of my presentation, I did this. Just like, you’re laughing. I looked at that and I was a guest. I said, what is that? And not only did I do it once, I did and it was like.
I came from behind.
I came up and over and down like this in the middle of my presentation. Now I was making $700,000 doing that stupid stuff. What are you doing? You’ve got to critique yourself, right? So one of the pages that we use is the cash flow quadrant. Now I’m not going to go through all the details of this. We don’t have time. But I want to just hit a few points. So what’s the main point of the cash flow quadrant? To me, the main point is you’ve got to figure out how you want to make your money. And you can make it actively working or you can make it passive, you can make it trading time for money, or you can make it where you build something, you build assets, or you build a business that pays you while you’re not working.
That’s what gives you freedom. And if you think about the options, active go to work or passive build.
Something that pays you when you don’t work.
What’s the obvious answer? I mean, if someone actually heard you ask the question, they don’t get it wrong. So Kiyosaki said, there’s the employee and there’s the self employed and they have to trade time for money. They can make a lot of money. But when they stop working, what happens to their income? So when they stop working, what happens to their income? It stops. So if you’re doing a presentation and.
You ask a question to somebody and they answer it like some of you just answered it, ask it again. Ask it again. Make sure people are with you. So the other side of the quadrant, Kiyosaki said, was the business owner and.
The investor, where you build a business.
That pays you when you’re not working because you recruit, train, and develop people to run your business. And the investor builds assets. And we’re all here to get financially independent. Yes. How good would it be to have enough assets, money, cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement plans, sitting where it generated enough income that you didn’t have to work? How many of you like that? Everybody would like that, right? So here’s the real question. Here’s the real question. Which two ways to earn income would appeal to you most? If you could pick any two. The left side or the right side? Left side or right side? Right answers are always on the right side.
Okay.
Just so you know. But where are most people?
And so what stops them from making the change?
See, these are the questions people see.
I’m on the left. I want to be on the right. How do I get there?
What stops them is time, money, knowledge, risk, and fear. Those are the things that stop people.
And all we’ve done as a company.
Is develop a system that eliminates those problems. So if I could show you a way to get from the left side.
To the right side and eliminate the.
Normal challenges that you’d be dealing with if you were going to try to get to the right side. Are you open to that conversation? Would you be willing to at least consider making a change if you agreed that what we do has massive value? Yes.
Yes.
So that’s my cash flow quadrant story. I’ve been telling it for 46 years. I feel I’m here 46 years. 46 years doing this. Do you understand that if you learn your presentation really well, you learn how to overcome objectives, Hector’s going to talk really well. And you get really good at referrals, and you get good enough at recruiting and getting people started in the business. The basic seven fundamentals that Hector teaches, if you get good at those now, while you’re getting started, if you take the time, effort, and energy to put everything you’ve got into getting great at those fundamentals, it’ll last you a lifetime. You will be able to do it.
Over and over and over.
Again for years and years. Not only change your life, but change the lives of others because you will.
Be the master copy.
So that’s cash flow Quadrant. Our mission statement. Pretty simple mission statement. All right, mission statement. See, in business, so these are kind of like the recruiting slides, right? So in business, what’s the goal?
Find a need and fill the need. Find out what people want and need and help them get it. So that’s kind of my setup for our mission statement.
Our mission statement is very simple. To help families earn more income, become.
Properly protected, debt free and financially independent. Now I might slow down and ask you, so how many families would want.
To earn more income?
How many people who love their families want to properly protect them in the event that the breadwinner dies prematurely? How many families, how many individuals would want to have no debt at all? How many people would love to be financially independent? Where you have enough money, where you don’t have to work.
Are people interested in any of these subjects, yes or no?
So there’s a need, right?
So there’s another page. I mastered it.
I do it over and over and over. I don’t care which presentation you use, but be a master at it.
Live it. All right, the rule of 72.
I don’t know about all of you, but I find the most people that are most interested in the most things that we talk about when we present.
Is they’re blown away by the Rule of 72.
Art Williams said that the Rule of 72, the magic of compound interest, completely.
Blew his butt out of the water. He just couldn’t believe the difference in 3 and 6 and 12. And he talks about it all the time. And so the rule of 72, I just tell a story.
You’re 20 years old, you just inherited 10 grand from your grandparents.
The rules were you had to save the money, you had to put the.
Money away until you were ready to retire.
So if you put it, let’s say in a bank or a whole life policy, it would grow to 40,000. Well, what’s the rule say, how does the rule work?
The rule says divide your interest rate into 72.
The answer is the number of years it takes your money to double.
You all know that, right?
But sometimes you have to explain that, like make sure people get it. Divide the interest rate in. The answer is how long it takes money to double. So you invest ten grand, you drop it off at the bank. What does the bank do with your money when you drop it off there? What does the insurance company do with your money when you pay your premiums, they use our money. So at 3%. So you all know the rule. 3% if we double. So here’s if you double the rate. I learned this from Bob. If you double the rate, what do you think would happen to the money if you doubled the rate? Now, I did that wrong. Let me go back, because I asked that question without that part up.
But if you doubled the rate from 3 to 6, what would it seem like should happen to the money if you doubled the rate? I said the word doubled how many times? Generally they say 80,000 when I ask it that way, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s 160,000. It quadrupled. Now, Bob Safford didn’t say that when I first met him. He said, look at that, it fourpled. And I’ll never forget when he said it because I said, if the guy’s saying the word fourple, I think I could make it here.
Okay, but what happens if we get 12 and then we go, and I have people guess, what is it? And no one ever guesses it. And I let them guess, but no one ever guesses 2.56 million.
So here’s the questions.
How do you win a game if you don’t know the rules? Answer, who would benefit by knowing this rule? Shouldn’t we have learned in school? And without you introducing to the people you care about, when will they hear about this rule? If Tom hadn’t introduced me to you tonight, when would you have heard about this rule? That’s a referral hit, right? So there’s Another rule of 72, theory of decreasing responsibility. Theory. Decreased responsibility is a single. If there’s one page I could do that would get across the ideas to somebody as fast as possible, it would be theory of decreasing responsibility. Because theory just says very simply. And this is again from Bob Safford, he said, read what’s on the page. And it says, in the early years you may need a lot of money, and in later years you may not.
No, in the early. That’s not what it says. It says, in the early years. I corrected myself. In the early years. Read it. In the early years, you may need a lot of money. I don’t think I’m getting this by. In the early years, you may need.
A lot of coverage.
There we go. Boy, I’ll watch this critique and give myself a bunch of crap. So in the early years, you may need a lot of coverage. Later years, you may not. The early years, you May not have a lot of money, but in the.
Later years you better.
That’s how life works, doesn’t it? And I learned that as a kid and I said that over and I would nod like that and they would all nod. I’ll never forget Bob once saying, just make sure you say, that’s the way it works, doesn’t it? People are all confused, okay? But really, basically what theory says is when the kids are young and the debts are high, that’s when you have the most responsibility to protect them. And when you’re old, you need a lot of money. The kids are growing, the debts are low, you need a lot of money. So we just teach rent a pile of money until you build your own pile of money. And you rent a pile of money by buying low cost term life insurance until you accumulate money. Your financial independence number. Now you’re self insured.
If you had a million bucks and no insurance and you died, what would the family get? If you had a million bucks and no life insurance at age 65 and you died, what would the family get? Do they care where it comes from? And when you’re old, you want a.
Lot of money or a lot of life insurance. Can’t buy groceries with life insurance policy. You need money.
That’s our game plan. Would you agree with the, does that make sense? Would you agree with it? What life insurance company do you know of that teaches families how to get out of the need for life insurance? Because we’re a financial services marketing organization. All right, in one minute and 45 seconds, I’m going to hit the next one and I’m just, and I’m not even actually going to go through this, but I want you all just to think about whole life index, universal life, variable life, any kind of life insurance that has insurance and savings in it. And I’m going to give you a very simple story right now that you could tell that completely disarms anybody that.
Says whole life, Universal Life or Index.
Life is a good product and you could do it in about one or two minutes. So I’m not going to do the page. I want you to listen to the story. What is the goal of a life insurance company? Make money. Make profit. Yes.
All right, so if you bought a.
$100,000 policy from New York Life, for example, and you’re paying $1,000 a year.
For that, I’m just using this as an example.
And you bought that plan because you.
Wanted money for your family. If you died and you wanted money, that’s Available that you could borrow, that you could use. You wanted savings. You didn’t want to have to die to win. You wanted to accumulate like an asset you wanted to own, not rent. That’s how it’s sold to people. So if you bought that based on those assumptions, what does New York Life do with your money when it arrives in their home office? What do they. The money comes in. New York Life has it. They’ve got $100,000 risk on you dying. Now they’ve got this premium. What do they do with the money?
Well, no, here’s what they do.
They take part of the money and they carve enough out to cover the risk of you dying. It’s called mortality expense. It’s called actuarial science. They know out of a thousand healthy 30 year olds, a certain number will die and if they get enough money, it’ll cover those that die. It’s called term insurance. They buy term insurance and then what do they do with the rest of the money? They buy stocks and they buy bonds and they buy Treasuries and they buy real estate and. And they have cash. That sounds a little like a mutual fund. So they buy term and invest the difference with your money.
What was their goal?
Make a profit. Now how are you going to beat them at that game if you’re buying this Whole Life thing? They’re using your money to go do what we’re telling you to do from the beginning. Why don’t you just buy the term and invest the difference and then you beat them at their own game? Does that make sense? See, and it’s just math, folks. It’s just math. And you can beat any. And all you have to do is say that to that Whole Life agent is can you please explain to me how that Whole Life policy is going to better than what they do with the money when they get it? Which is what we tell people to do from the beginning. Just explain that to me. And they babble. They do not have the answer because there is no answer to that question.
So you all, you just need to know and understand we’ve got the goods. You’ve got to take the time to get great at it. I love every day working with my son in the business. There is nothing like seeing a little boy grow up and then want to be in your business and then you get to work with him every day. That’s my son, Zach. Patty and I are so proud to have a family business. You all can build something so amazing here. I’m looking at Scotty and Tom, right? There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like getting up in the. I saw Nicole got a securities award. There’s nothing like seeing your kids win. And in the business that you love, appreciate you all have a great one.
