Ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, trying to lead your team but not seeing the results you want? You’re not alone. Many reps struggle with finding the right leadership approach that truly inspires and motivates their team. But what if you could change that? What if you could learn the secrets of great leadership from someone who has been in your shoes and knows exactly what it takes to succeed? That’s exactly what Rusty Crosland shares in this powerful session. It’s packed with insights and real-life experiences that will help you transform your leadership style and achieve the success you’ve been dreaming of. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best. Watch the video below and discover the breakthrough tips that can take your leadership skills to the next level.
Video Transcription:
Here’s the first thing I’m going to teach you today.
The first rule of great leadership is that you and I, we’re exactly the same.
I started where you started.
I sat in that chair.
I have walked in your shoes.
I’ve thought your thoughts.
All the good, the bad, the ugly, I’ve been there.
The only thing that separates you and I is the time that I’ve been doing it.
Believe it or not.
October the 22nd, 1972.
Show of hands.
How many of you in this room were not born in October of 1972? Gosh, Ed, every time I do that, I tell myself, why in the h*** do I even say that? Okay, so before we get started, I do have a message for you today.
But willis.
Right.
Where are you? Willis? Willis, where are you? Is Willis not here? Well, that screws up my talk.
Willis, come here.
Come here, Willis.
Okay.
Willis, come on up here quickly.
Jeanette.
Where is Willis? Is he in the john? Well, that messes up my talk.
I need somebody else.
Ed.
Take Brian.
Brian.
Brian Turner.
Brian, where are you? All right, brian, you’ll be my guinea pig here, okay? I’m going to do two things for you.
I’m going to let you have that for a few minutes, all right? That’s my circle of champion.
I’m going to let your bride or your wife or your girlfriend right there, okay? Let you wear that.
By the way, that watch costs more than my first house.
All right? One of the things I want to also show you is dustin, put that first picture up, okay? If you would, please.
Okay.
That’s team crossland.
Okay.
That’s Rocky, Maggie and Grayson.
Okay? They’re the ones that watch over the ring and the watch.
Just in case you think about going out that door with my watch and ring, bring that next picture up.
This is the last person that tried to leave with my ring and my watch.
All right? I always have to have some fun with that.
No, thank you.
I can’t take the pay cut.
First of all, it’s a great honor to be here to share some time with you.
I got so many things I can talk to you about.
By the way, I don’t pay any attention to that thing back there, so I’ll try to do my best to get through this.
I’d like to take just a few minutes of your time today because I know that, first of all, I’m not here to motivate you.
You’re already motivated because you’re here.
Okay? What I want to try to do in the little time we have to share together is I want to try to inspire you.
I want you to think, and by the way, Brandon did such an awesome job.
Great.
He’s going to be a superstar.
He talked a lot about the way you should think and how you feel.
You see, I believe our business is about how you feel and what you do about how you feel.
Our business is about how you feel and what you do about how you feel.
I want to try to just climb down inside your head and readjust the knobs and get you to think differently.
Because to wear a ring like that and to travel the world like Ed Yvonne and I have, you got to start thinking differently, okay? When you look in the mirror tomorrow morning, you just got to tell yourself, I can do this.
Don’t let anybody tell you can’t do this.
The only reason why someone will tell you can’t is because they want to keep you where they are.
They don’t want you to go to the place that you want to go to.
They want to keep you where you are.
It’s hard to believe I have been doing this 50 years.
I know I don’t look that old, but I started very young.
50 years, long time.
I started in this business in 1972.
I was a high school basketball coach.
I was living up the road here in Atlanta.
I was very successful as a coach, very unsuccessful in the financial aspect of my life, okay? I was starving to death, Jackie.
I was broke.
If it cost fifty cents to travel around the world, you’re looking at a dude could have gotten out of sight.
All right? I was broke.
I had a friend of mine who was a sportswriter for The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the newspaper up there in Atlanta.
He called me up one day and said, rusty, I’ve got something I want to come talk to you about.
Now, being a coach and he being a sports writer, I thought he wanted to come over and interview me.
Right? Right.
Name of the paper picture, how sports guys jason, you and Eric, you played sports.
We all want ink, right? We all want our name in the paper, a picture of the paper.
I thought, well, heck, he’s going to come by and interview me.
And so I said, sure.
I figured he wanted to come by the coach’s office.
He said, well, I’d like to come by your house.
That struck me as a little different.
He said to me, by the way, I want to bring somebody with me.
That really got me to thinking.
And so his name was Mike Bentley.
I said, Mike, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
It sounds like you want to try to sell me something.
I don’t want nothing, I don’t need nothing.
More important than that, I can’t afford nothing.
Okay? But again, you athletes, right? Sports writer.
I had four kids that could get scholarships.
How do kids get scholarships? Right? Get their name in the paper.
I said, well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Mike.
I’m going to let you come by, but don’t try to sell me anything, said Rusty.
I promise I won’t try to sell you anything.
And so then I started thinking.
Now you got to listen.
Even if he came by Jason, if he came by and tried to sell me something my undergraduate degree is in biology.
I wasn’t really good at math, but I did know this if you write a check to buy something and you ain’t got no money in the bank, you really hadn’t bought nothing.
Correct.
So I knew I was safe.
I knew I was safe.
There comes the knock on the door and walks my friend Mike.
And right behind Mike walks us.
A little short, kind of fat, little bald headed fella.
Sticks out his hand and says, hi, Rusty.
My name is Art Williams.
You know what my first impression was? Big deal.
How quickly can you get out of my house, right? He sits down at my kitchen table and he begins to tell me this story.
In about 30 minutes, ladies and gentlemen, that little, short, fat, bald, ex football coach.
Not only did he change my whole life as the story went back then, he changed my entire life.
He changed my kids lives, he changed my grandkids lives.
Six or seven months ago and I started saying this and my granddaughter keeps reminding me that I didn’t have anything to do with it.
I had my first great grandchild, Marley June.
Okay? And Marley June.
Lives in Ozark, Alabama.
Quote Marley June.
Where? Ozark, Alabama.
Okay, she’s not going to live in New York City but that’s the genesis of Rusty CrossLam 50 years.
You see, the one thing I understand about our business it’s a time tested, proven and documented story that works.
And just look around you.
The chances are most of you probably couldn’t get a job at Merrill Lynch.
Chances are most of you probably even though you may have gone to college and had got a good education, you probably were never, in the grand scheme of things ever really been able to be financially independent.
I’m here to tell you today you have a time tested, documented, proven system that works.
You can be anything you want to be.
You can do anything you want to do.
I want to talk to you, and again, I promise you I’m going to go over for a few minutes and I hope you please forgive me, but I want to talk to you about what I call the four cornerstones of the Primerica experience.
I had something else I was going to talk about, but I feel compelled to really talk to you about this particular idea.
I say there are four cornerstones of primary cornerstones are the building blocks that hold things together.
Okay? The first cornerstone is what I call real opportunity.
Real opportunity.
By the way, if you’re taking some notes, do me a favor, because I’ll tell you what you can do with this.
When I’m done, just write down my email address.
It’s Rusty Crossland, the number two@gmail.com, and I’ll tell you.
So you all have that.
I’m going to talk more about as I close.
So it’s real opportunity.
Real opportunity.
Not just opportunity, because real opportunity does not exist in our great country today.
There is opportunity, but we’re talking about real opportunity.
What that means is to do what you want to do, go where you want to go, be what you want to be, get exactly what you want, need and deserve out of life using your God given talent.
Now, that’s what real opportunity is.
There’s one place that I know of that you can have real opportunity.
It’s called Primerica.
It’s called Primerica.
The second cornerstone is real freedom.
Real freedom.
Not freedom.
Yeah, we live in the land of the free, in the home of the brave.
But are we really free? Financially free? You’re told what to do, when to do it, when not to do it, when to go to work, when to go to coffee break, when to have a vacation.
Everything in your life is determined by the wills and the whims of the decisions of somebody else.
You’re not free.
You’re not free.
Oh, yeah, we’re free to do the vote the way we want to vote.
When it comes right down to it, man, we’re locked up.
Our lives are controlled by somebody or something else.
I want you to be really free to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it.
There’s a place you can find that freedom.
It’s called Primerica.
The third cornerstone is real security.
Real security where you can have the feeling that no matter what happens, you’re secure.
It’s funny.
I say this with tremendous humility.
My little great grandchild, Marley June, she’s set for life.
She’s six months old.
That’s assuming my kids don’t screw it up.
It’s real security.
Ed, do you got a credit card on you? Yeah.
Let me see that credit card.
Here’s what real security is.
Just used as a prop there.
I don’t want your driver’s license.
Thank you.
Okay, how many of you have at least one or two of these in your pocket? All right? Most of us probably have it.
So here’s real security.
If you go to buy something, they these things, you stick them in there, they got chips now, or you slide.
Well, if you stick it in there and the machine blows up, you got a problem, right? But what if it doesn’t matter? What if you don’t even need a credit card? I’ll tell you, this.
Rusty Crosswalk has not balanced the checkbook in 50 years.
Well, maybe 49.
First of all, I have somebody else do it for me.
I couldn’t do it right in the first place, so that’s pretty good, right? It’s called security.
It’s called security.
Your partner, if you have a partner, whether it’s your husband or your wife or your best friend or your mommy what if they would ever have to work? What if you could live in the house you want to live in, travel the world, pay cash for everything, drive the finest cars, live in the nicest house, travel to the great places in the world and not have to worry about it? It’s called security.
Guess what? How many of at least one person that has been laid off beside yourself? Downsized, okay? They lay you off, they go out of business.
They you know what I’m talking about.
You don’t have you’re about as secure as your next heartbeat.
Jason, let me introduce you to Eric.
He’s my new son in law.
He does the job you used to do.
You are as secure as your next heartbeat.
You want real security? It’s called the Primerica experience.
The fourth cornerstone is probably the most important.
It’s real responsibility.
Real responsibility.
You have the responsibility of sharing Primerica with everyone.
You know someone? Pretty much everywhere I go, people ask me the same question.
Rusty, give me the one thing.
The one thing, right.
You know what the one thing is? Talk to everybody.
Tell your story to anybody who will listen.
Tell your story to anyone who will listen.
Why? Because you understand the rule of 72.
You understand theory of decreasing responsibility.
The difference between cash value and term insurance.
Most of the people who you come in contact with every day, they don’t have a clue.
You have the gift.
You have the gift.
It’s your responsibility to share it.
You’re going to get three answers yes, no, or maybe.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
If I was a professional baseball player, I’d already be in the hall of Fame.
Never, ever miss an opportunity to talk business with anybody, any place, anytime, anywhere.
Rusty Crossland has recruited people using that ring.
Rusty Crossland has recruited people on a trout stream.
Rusty Crossland has rusty Crossland recruited five people in the father’s waiting room of the Cab General Hospital.
When my four children were being born, my wife was in that room over there screaming and hollering and doing what they do, right? And I’m in there giving a presentation.
Okay, how many of you are Dads? Okay, so when your wife was in the delivery room, you were sitting back there just worried about see, I was given presentations.
What were you doing? What of expected fathers.
They need your help.
Any place, any time, anywhere, John.
I appreciate that warm introduction.
I wish my mom and dad were here to hear that.
They wouldn’t have believed it, but I wish they were here to at least have heard it.
The thing that I know about our business.
It’s time testing.
It’s proven.
It’s documented.
I don’t care who you are.
I don’t care how old you are.
I don’t care how tall you are.
I don’t care what the color of your skin is.
I don’t care where you came from.
One of the things, Ed, I was so fascinated with that a large number of people, John, that I have heard of here, they came to America.
We were lucky to be born here.
Some people there was one young gentleman up here last night that came here six years ago.
Okay? How wonderful is that, folks? You just don’t really some of you do.
Most of you really don’t know what you have a hold of here.
Most of you don’t really know.
I promise you this the opportunity is real.
The freedom is real.
The security is real, and the responsibility is real.
You have the responsibility to preach the good news, to preach the gospel according to Art Williams, and great things can happen.
Let me sort of close with this.
You know, I’ve just been very fortunate.
I thank God every day that Art Williams walked into my life.
I thank God for people like Ed n Yvonne and John Lavin and so many other great leaders eric and Jackie and Brennan and Jason.
I mean, the people who I have been able to share my life with.
So many wonderful people.
It’s called the Primerica experience.
All of my friends, but for the most part, all of my friends, the people I want to hang out with, they’re in Primerica.
Why? Because we think alike, okay? We’re different, but yet we’re really the same.
We all want to go to the same place.
We all want to be successful.
We all want to have the things that everybody else wants.
We’re all on the same train together, and we’re all heading in the same direction.
It’s called the Primerica experience.
Let me close with this.
I was thinking about this sitting at lunch today.
I’m guessing that this is 30 years ago, maybe even longer.
Ed, I was doing at a meeting like this up in Seattle, Washington.
I was living in Atlanta at the time, and they had a big fast start school.
I was talking and doing my thing.
At the end of the school, I was ready to scoot home.
Okay? Usually on Saturday I’d get on the red eye and fly home.
I wanted to be home for church on Sunday and breakfast at the Pancake House with my kids.
I did that all the time.
I never missed a Sunday.
I had this one young guy, Eric, come up to me and he said, Russia, I really enjoyed the school.
It was great.
But I got a question for you.
And he said, I’m kind of new.
Tell me, you got to listen carefully now.
Tell me, what can I get out of Primerica? I thought for a minute, what can I get out of Primerica? At that point, Erica, I was, like, ready to scoot Jason.
I was like, I want to get out of there, right? You still have my watch and ring, right? Okay, great.
I just said, well, you can make a lot of money.
You can drive a nice car, live a nice house, have a nice watch or whatever.
He just looked at me and kept looking at me and look at me, and I could tell that he wasn’t getting the answer he wanted.
I decided to take a step back, and I said, scratch all that.
That’s not really what you can get out of Primerica.
And I looked at him.
The most important thing is this.
It’s not what you get out of Primerica that really counts.
It’s what Primerica will get out of you.
Because inside each one of you, no matter who you are, I don’t care how old you are, I don’t care where you have come from, inside each one of you, man or a woman, beats the heart of a giant.
Someone who wants to be somebody.
You just don’t know how yet.
Inside of you beats the heart of a giant.
The primary experience will get you the opportunity to find that person.
If you do, great things can happen.
It’s always a supreme honor to share with the Ortiz, two of all six right, of my closest friends.
And let me leave you with this.
So I gave you my email address.
One of the things I like to do is connect.
Connection is very important in Primerica, connecting with your teammates, connecting with people.
One of the biggest challenges I have is I’m going to head back.
I’m actually in Scottsdale right now.
I’ll be heading back to Scottsdale tomorrow, and I have my friends.
99% of you, I may never have the opportunity to talk to you again and tell you, look you in the eye, touch your heart, let you know that you can do this, okay? You can do this.
Don’t let someone steal your hope or your dream.
I don’t care.
You can do this.
Hopefully, in some of the words that we’ve been able to share, you kind of understand that there is an opportunity here and that you can really do something extraordinary.
