Executive TLDR
Build a business that pays you in your absence through residual income and overrides.
Storms in life expose whether your business is built or dependent on you.
Double down on recruiting, licensing, and duplication systems.
Learn from top leaders and create a strong environment.
Make money consistently, businesses must generate income.
Lead your family through adversity with resilience and faith.
Video Summary
In this emotional and inspiring message, Ted Tracy Agelis shares his journey of resilience, faith, and leadership through life’s storms. Reflecting on earlier success that lacked depth and stability, he explains the danger of building income that depends entirely on personal production instead of a true residual and override based business. After experiencing personal tragedy and later facing his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis during pregnancy, he realized the true meaning of building a Primerica business that pays you in your absence so you can be present for your family when they need you most. Guided by mentors like Mike Pressler and other top leaders, he committed to double digit recruiting, expanding licenses, creating systems, and building an environment that mirrors the full structure of Primerica. He emphasizes opening all avenues of the business, life, securities, managed accounts, and promoting leaders who do the same. Through discipline, systems, and faith, his team shifted to a model where the majority of income comes from overrides and residual income rather than personal effort. He reinforces simple but powerful principles, get all your licenses, show up to everything, focus on attendance, make money consistently, follow the recruit license train promote system, avoid avoiding pain, and study what winners do. His closing message centers on leading your family through storms rather than avoiding them, proving that resilience, faith, and a properly built business create stability even during life’s most difficult seasons.
FAQs
1. What does it mean to build a business that pays you in your absence?
It means creating residual income and override income through team growth so revenue continues even when you cannot personally produce.
2. Why is relying only on personal production risky?
If income depends solely on you, any personal crisis or absence can significantly reduce earnings.
3. How did adversity reshape his business strategy?
Life challenges revealed the need for depth, duplication, and a strong leadership base rather than a lone wolf approach.
4. Why is double digit recruiting emphasized?
Consistent recruiting creates momentum, depth, and future leadership necessary for long term stability.
5. What does “build in the likeness of Primerica” mean?
Structure your base shop to mirror the full company model, life, securities, managed accounts, and leadership promotion.
6. Why are licenses so important?
Licenses open additional avenues of production and income, allowing broader service and greater business depth.
7. What role does environment play in resilience?
A strong environment provides emotional support, coaching, accountability, and faith during difficult seasons.
8. Why is “make money” a core principle?
A real business must generate consistent income, activity without income is not sustainable growth.
9. How do systems protect your business during crises?
Systems allow duplication, organization, and team driven production that continues beyond personal effort.
10. What is the leadership lesson from life’s storms?
True leaders guide their families and teams through adversity with faith, unity, and disciplined action.
Glossary
Residual Income – Ongoing income generated from team production and client retention rather than personal effort alone.
Override Income – Compensation earned from the production of licensed team members.
Double Digit Recruiting – Consistently recruiting ten or more new representatives within a set period.
Base Shop – A fully functioning office structure that mirrors the broader company model.
Recruit License Train Promote – The core duplication system of building new leaders.
Lone Wolf RVP – A leader whose income depends mostly on personal production rather than team depth.
Build in Your Absence – Creating systems and leadership depth so income continues without daily personal involvement.
Resilience and Faith – Maintaining strength, belief, and forward motion during adversity.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What’s happening, everybody? How you guys doing? All right, all right, cool. First of all, give it up to my wife. She birthed an 11 pound baby two weeks ago and she’s standing right here. So I always say, if, God, if guys had to give birth, everybody would just die off. So I’m gonna try and do something a little different than what I normally do today. I’m gonna, I’m gonna. First, I want to, you know, thank. First of all, I want to thank God for being here. I want to thank. Yeah, I want to thank our uplines, specifically Mike and Kirsten Pressler, our incredible RVP team and our base shop and of course, more than anything, my beautiful wife. I’m going to tell you guys a story. I don’t normally do, like, stories, stuff.
Speaker 1
I usually just tell people stuff, but I wrote stuff down to keep me on track. You know, six years ago, Tracy and I were standing on this stage. We had just crossed over 200,000 of income, but we didn’t have a $200,000 business. You know, I was like a lone wolf. RVP, you know, the ones that walk in right when the meeting starts because the only person they have to find a seat for is themselves, you know, those RVPs, right? But at the time, we had our best month ever. You know, we made $81,000. It took us from 120 to 200. But we really couldn’t celebrate because, you know, at the same time, my wife’s best friend, my sister in law, her sister was on life support and ultimately lost her life. Tracy and I were newly married, ready to take on the world.
Speaker 1
And I’ll be honest with you, that one phone call, everything came crashing down. You know, were at 27 codes, but no one was really showing up. All of our income came from us. I knew we did not have a built $200,000 income. And at the time, Scott Fletcher, for those of you who know him, told me that it was a great accomplishment, but it was a really dangerous place to be in your business. And Mike Pressler, who’s done more for me than I can articulate, has said to me once years ago, make sure you build a business that pays you in your absence because one day your family’s going to need your presence. And during that time when were going through that, I realized what he had meant all those years ago when he told me that. And were not ready for it then.
Speaker 1
You know, that was one of the hardest points in my life. It took Tracy and I to the brink and it took us time to bounce back from that, mentally, emotionally, to really find our confidence. And you know, thank God there’s people in Primerica who can support you through stuff like that. And at that time I decided, you know, we really need to start building a business and building, you know, residual income, recurring income. And all we talked about was double digit recruiting, you know, nothing else. In fact, the year we made that decision, I was actually the number one personal securities producer every month in the state of New Jersey. And no one on our team knew until we did our year end recognition. So luckily in Primerica, there’s always people available to help you. So I started searching for answers.
Speaker 1
I called people like Chris Achung. I was asking him questions and asking about how to create an environment. So he invited me to his house during a UFC night. I was like, okay, got it. I went to Glenn and Zio’s office. They gave me a vision of what I called people like David Kim, who taught me how to build systems to keep us a type personalities organized, right? People like the Fields and the Lashners on how to grow a securities business and countless other RVPs. And you know, since that decision, we’ve won every trip life insecurities, we’ve promoted RVPs, watch earners, ring earner, we’ve opened our own office, we’ve grown our income by 300 grand. 75% of our income now comes in overrides and residual income. But our greatest accomplishment has been having two beautiful children, Nico and our daughter Teddy.
Speaker 1
Now, but you know, I’m going to move fast, but fast forward, April 26th of this year, I’m sitting doing an appointment, replacing a cash value policy. And on this appointment I get a call from my wife that she had tested positive for breast cancer. 13 weeks pregnant, expecting our second child. And once again, we felt the weight of the world on us. And after months of searching for alternative methods, traveling across the country to get additional options and treatment options, we found ourselves in Mount Sinai, where my wife would have to get a double mastectomy at 24 years pregnant. Sorry, 24 weeks pregnant. That’s what I said, right? Oh, 24 years pregnant. Yeah. That’s a long pregnancy. 24 weeks pregnant. I got her permission to share this picture. And let me tell you, I’ve never loved my wife more than I do now.
Speaker 1
Man, watching how she has handled what we’ve had to go through has been unbelievable. Really. And I’m telling you this because for the first time in my life, these last six months, I had Done zero personal production. Multiple months in the last six months. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but we’ve averaged over $40,000 a month. And we’ve crossed. And we crossed our fourth diming during that. So I want to. Yeah, so I want to talk to you about what things we did to focus on, to even put us in a position to be present during this really tough time. You know, one time I was sitting in Glenn and Zio’s office and Keith said, build a business in the likeness of Primerica. And you know, it’s probably something he says all the time or maybe he doesn’t, I don’t know.
Speaker 1
But that has. When I heard him say that became. What’s it. Oh, pull up. No, they. Did they. Pull up the picture. No, no, show this picture my wife, please. So real quick, this is my. Yeah, pull up the picture. No, no, pick up the picture. There’s slides, right? Yeah. Okay. This was my wife. Right. 24 weeks pregnant. Anyway, I’m going to move fast. We’re out of time. And Keith said that. And that has been the center point of our business philosophy since. Okay, I’m gonna skip this slide, right? But you know, because birds of a feather flock together even in Primerica. And when you decide to make changes in your Primerica business, sometimes there’s people even in our business that kind of help force, like they push against you. They push back, right? So here’s how I view our business.
Speaker 1
And I’m gonna move fast, right? I want to build a business that looks like Primerica. So you gotta replace the word Primerica with your name, okay? And you gotta start opening all the aisles in your business, right? You know, for some of us, you know, our business looks like this. And I’m not judging, everybody does their own thing. I have tremendous respect for everybody. I’m just telling you how what we want to do. You know, for some people, it looked like this. My business looked like this for a while. But we wanted a business like this. Which means what? More you’re gonna recruit more people than you license. You’re gonna have more life license and securities licenses, more securities license, managed account license. That’s just the way it works, right?
Speaker 1
Our goal is to build a base shop that does everything and then promote RVPs that simply do everything. That’s just our goal, right? That’s just how we like to operate. It’s how we want to operate. So I’m going to just give you some quick action steps on things we focus on to put Ourselves in this position, with the few minutes I got with you. Okay? Number one, get all your licenses. Just get them. By the way, I failed every exam Primerica has to offer multiple times. I dropped out of college. You know, I started this business when I was in my early 20s, right? No experience, son of an immigrant, no financial advantages. But what you talk about, you’re going to bring about. So all we started talking about was double digit recruiting, right? We talked about it at nauseum, right?
Speaker 1
Because what you talk about, you bring about. Show up to everything, attend everything. Focus on attendance. Here’s a big one. Make money. Rule number one in business. Make money. If you say you’re building a business and you ain’t making money, you ain’t building a business. All right? Businesses make money, okay? Follow the system, right? Recruit, license, train and promote. I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard before. Focus on the activity. Don’t avoid the pain. It gives you the lessons you need to get to the next level. And most importantly, watch what the winners are doing. Just look at the front row of people. Focused, locked in, taking notes, right? If it’s not above people like Willie Naranjo to sit here and take notes at almost $8 million, it’s certainly not above anybody in this room, right? So. So here’s the question, right?
Speaker 1
Because at the end of the day, whose opinion, by the way? Doesn’t she look great after birth? Isn’t that crazy, right? I was like, no filters on that baby. That’s God given. All right, here we go. So whose opinions matter to you, though? Ready? See, most people say they would die for their family. But would you live for your family? Through fire and chaos, we are forged, not broken. Every scar tells a story of resilience. Every fall fuels the rise. The storm may rage, but it cannot last forever. And when it ends, we don’t just survive. We emerge unstoppable, victorious and free. Out of the difficulties grow miracles. And every storm eventually gives way to the calmest skies. A hero isn’t the one who avoids the storm, but the one who leads their family through it. Stronger. United. Unbroken.
Speaker 1
I gotta tell you, my wife has become one of my biggest heroes, man. And I just gotta tell y’all, right? I look forward to seeing you all become the heroes for your family. Thank you so much. God bless. We’ll see you guys at the top.
