Executive TLDR

• Success in Primerica is built on fundamentals, not shortcuts.

• Lack of resources isn’t the problem — lack of resourcefulness is.

• Professionals succeed by mastering failure, not avoiding it.

• Mental toughness determines long-term growth.

• New agents must compete, stay coachable, and focus on fundamentals.

Video Summary

Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities In Primerica

Ted Agelis delivers a candid and high-impact message about growth inside Primerica — emphasizing that obstacles are not barriers but building blocks.

He begins by reflecting on how unlikely his journey was:

• Son of an immigrant father

• No elite background

• No predictable path to wealth

Yet one invitation to a Primerica office 17 years ago changed everything.

Luck may open the door.

Courage walks through it.

From Opportunity To Responsibility

Ted reminds first-time attendees:

Someone had the courage to talk to you about this business.

Now you must develop the courage to talk to someone else.

Opportunity only compounds when passed forward.

Fundamentals Broken Down

Ted creatively breaks down the word fundamentals into three parts:

Fun

Enjoy being new.

Enjoy not knowing everything yet.

But understand:

The journey is often stressful before it becomes rewarding.

The fun increases after you start winning.

Duh

Some principles are obvious — yet ignored.

Just like sports require basic skills, Primerica requires mastery of:

• Recruiting

• Prospecting

• Presentations

• Training

• Activity consistency

With tools like Primerica Online, access to leadership content and training is constant.

Excuses are eliminated when resources are available.

Mentals

Mental strength is the separator.

“If you want an easy life, get good at hard things.
If you want a hard life, keep doing easy things.”

The person you become determines what you accomplish.

Situations will either:

• Make you

• Or break you

Leadership requires emotional maturity.

When You Become A Leader

Ted highlights a crucial shift:

When you become a leader, you forfeit the right to constantly complain.

Early-stage agents often make a critical mistake:

They talk about their hardships to their warm market instead of communicating vision and direction.

That weakens influence.

Leaders project stability — even during storms.

Pros vs Amateurs

Ted explains the core difference:

Professionals get paid.
Amateurs get practice.

But the biggest difference?

How they handle failure.

He uses a baseball analogy:

A .300 batting average makes you a multimillion-dollar professional.

That means you fail 7 out of 10 times.

Success in Primerica follows similar math.

The bigger you build:

• The more rejection you experience

• The more people quit

• The more setbacks you face

But increased failure volume means increased activity — and therefore increased success probability.

Failure is not the signal to stop.

It’s proof you’re moving.

Attitude And Activity

Success boils down to two controllables:

• Attitude

• Activity

Questions Ted challenges new agents to ask:

• Do I want to lose small or win big?

• Am I willing to pay the price for success?

• Am I paying attention to those ahead of me?

Observation is a growth strategy.

Top earners:

• Sit in the front

• Stand during recognition

• Contribute to the environment

They give energy, not just take it.

Three Types Of Leaders

Ted closes with a simple breakdown:

Winners
Wake up frustrated and compete anyway.

Potential winners
Wake up frustrated but hesitate.

Losers
Avoid competition and effort altogether.

The call to action is simple:

Get up.
Compete.
Lean on your uplines.
Master the fundamentals.

Core Lessons

Resourcefulness beats resources.
Master failure to master success.
Fundamentals create freedom.
Mental toughness compounds results.
Competition builds confidence.

FAQs

What is the main theme of Ted Agelis’ message?
Turning obstacles into opportunity through fundamentals and mental strength.

Does success require special advantages?
No. Resourcefulness matters more than resources.

What are the “fundamentals” in Primerica?
Recruiting, training, prospecting, and consistent activity.

What separates professionals from amateurs?
How they handle failure.

Why is failure emphasized so strongly?
Because increased activity naturally increases rejection volume.

What mistake do new agents often make?
Complaining about hardships to their warm market.

What role does mental toughness play?
It determines long-term sustainability.

What does a .300 batting average illustrate?
That high success often includes frequent failure.

How should new agents approach leadership?
By observing and modeling those ahead of them.

What two factors determine results?
Attitude and activity.

What are the three types of leaders described?
Winners, potential winners, and those who avoid competition.

What is the ultimate message?
Compete consistently and master the basics.

Glossary

Fundamentals
Core activities required for business growth, such as recruiting and prospecting.

Resourcefulness
The ability to find solutions despite limited external resources.

Warm Market
Personal contacts used to build initial business momentum.

Cold Market
Prospecting individuals without prior relationships.

Emotional Maturity
The ability to handle rejection and adversity without losing focus.

Professional Mindset
Operating with discipline, consistency, and resilience regardless of circumstances.

Transcript:

Awesome. Hey, hasn’t this been a phenomenal event? I got to tell you, before I get started, I wanted to obviously thank our team sin in the back there. I want to thank my beautiful wife Tracy, for always putting up with me. If you guys can give her, she’s awesome. And I want to thank Keith and Daniel Oto, for obviously putting on this event. And every. Everybody in the front two rows, I actually had a talk plan, but as I’m sitting here, and for those of you who speak at these events, you go through this, too. You’re like, I’m going to talk about this. And then you hear everybody talk, and you’re going to talk about this. I’m going to kind of shoot off the cuff a little bit, but real quick, raise your hand if this is your first event. All right, cool. Awesome.

So I want to talk to you guys specifically, because I’m sitting here, right? And I’m listening to everybody speak and all these phenomenal speakers, and I’m just sitting there going to myself, man, would I have understood what was happening or what was being said if I was sitting here today? And the truth is, I probably wouldn’t have been. I really wouldn’t have understood anything you guys were talking about. My father’s an immigrant, right? He immigrated here illegally, once. Legally once, right. I always hear Harvey say that I want to get in my immigration joke, but it’s crazy. I think about just how much luck played into me even being born. If you heard the story of how my folks met, it’s, like, unbelievable.

And I also think about the fact that I met a guy who I didn’t know previous to in my previous life, who invited me to some office about some financial thing. And 17 years ago, I would have never imagined that it would have became what it became. And just like my wife and I went on our first date, May 4, 2013. Prior to that, I didn’t know it would be my last first date. You get what I’m saying? I hope you thank your lucky stars that somebody had the guts to talk to you about Primerica. Okay. But now you have to get the guts to go talk to somebody else about. Know theme for this weekend has been fundamentals, right? And I’m going to kind of give you a fun spin on it. But I’ll tell you this, lack of resourcefulness.

Lack of resources has never stopped anybody from being successful. Just lack of resourcefulness. And I’m going to have you guys write down the word. I’m going to give you a little fun with that. I want you to write down the word fun, all right? And then under that, I want you to write down the word duh. Like, D-U-H. Can everybody say duh for me? Duh. Like, duh, right? Like, duh, right? Like, when it’s raining outside, somebody’s like, oh, it’s raining outside. It’s like, duh. Yeah, we know it’s raining. I get it. And then the third one is mentals, right? So, fundamentals, right? So I’m going to kind of break this word down. And have some fun with this. So, first one’s fun, right? For all of you who are brand new, enjoy the process of not knowing what you’re talking about yet.

No, really, just, like, enjoy it. But also understand that the fun comes after you start winning. Everybody says, oh, there’s this joy in the journey. I think that’s bullshit. I think the journey is stressful as hell. Really. When I was a regional leader, trying to become an RVP, that was stressful, right? When were opening an office, that was stressful. Right? Becoming parents, it’s fun and stressful, right? So enjoy the process. But also know that the fun comes later. Okay? Number two. Duh. Right? So there’s a bunch of things you have to learn in our business to be successful. You can’t avoid them, right? Like, I love basketball. I can’t play the game. But I do love watching the game. And if you’re going to play basketball. Or you’re going to play a professional sport.

There’s some basic things you need to know about the game. Like, you got to know what the rules are. You got to be able to run past, dribble, shoot. Right? You got to know those things. You got to be in great shape. Right? Those are, like, the duh things, right? And I don’t have enough time to teach you all the fundamentals. But I will tell you this. If you have Primerica online, there is no excuse why you shouldn’t master the fundamentals. Because before we had access to all the great leaders we have access to. We had access to them via videos and audios on Primerica Online. Right? I used to listen to a CD of Keith speaking at a Builders event. Before I ever met Keith Oto or shook his hand, right?

And what’s crazy is, I didn’t have access to people like that prior to Primerica. And now, I think I heard Glenn say this once. Glenn Lee. He said, the net worth of his cell phone. Is incredibly different than it was previous to Primerica. Like, before Primerica, I didn’t know anybody who had 30, 40, $50 million to the name made millions of dollars a year. I didn’t have someone like that I could call. You get what I’m saying? So you have access to those things. So those are like, those Duh things. Sometimes we’re, like, looking for these big answers, and they’re right in front of us. Right. These duh moments, right. And then the third one is the mentals, right. And I’ll just say, this is kind of a phrase I live by. If you want an easy life, get good at hard things.

And if you want a hard life, keep doing easy things, right. Because the man or woman you are will determine what you accomplish here. See, the situations you’re going to go through are either going to make you or break you. I guarantee you. And I don’t know this for a fact, but I do. The people in the first two rows have had situations over the course of their career that would bring most people to their knees. And the people that they were getting in front of the room, or again, in front of the room of, had no idea it was happening. See, some of us love talking about our problems, and the challenge is, when you become a leader, you forfeit the right to talk about your problems all the time. Right. I think that’s some that gets lost.

And when you’re brand new, I’ll just tell you this. The biggest error you make is bitching about the hardships of your business to the people who are closest to you. Right? No, I’ll just tell you. Because I was recruited in the cold market, but I built my whole business in the warm market, and a lot of us, right? We don’t realize that we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, talking about all of our challenges all the time versus talking about the direction we’re going in, right? So I wrote this down. The difference between pros and amateurs, right? There’s two things. Well, a couple of things. One, pros get paid, amateurs get practice, right? And then the other one is how they handle failure. The biggest difference between pros and amateurs are how they handle failure, right. It’s all about attitude and activity.

I’ll give you an example. Anybody a baseball fan? Okay, I’m not, but let’s just pretend, right? So watch this. If you’re a baseball player, if you’re a batter and you have a 300 batting average, you’re a professional baseball player. You’ll make $10 million a year. That means that you hit the ball 300 times out of every thousand at bats. So that actually means that you miss more than you hit. Right. But see, you don’t get paid for the hits. You get paid to be emotionally mature enough to handle failure and get up at bat again. Right? And the pros, the people in the front of the room know that, right? Like when you recruit ten people, you’re going to have eight or nine people quit on you. When you recruit 20 people, you’re going to have 16 people quit on you.

When you recruit 30 people, you guys know them. I’m not great at math, but you guys get the number, right? As you get bigger, you actually experience failure more than when you’re small. So what you end up doing is you end up avoiding that direction because you think you’re moving in the right direction. But the truth is, if you’re experiencing more failure, that means you’re going to experience more success. Does that make sense? Right. Thanks, guys. I had a story I was going to tell you. I can’t remember it, but hopefully the next minute I remember it. So really focus on asking yourself the right questions. So here’s some questions I would ask myself if I’m brand new, right? Do I want to lose small or do I want to win big?

Am I willing to accept that there’s a process and a price to be paid to be successful? Here’s the big one. Right? Pay attention. Am I paying attention to the people who are ahead of me? And here’s what I mean by during recognition, Keith made everybody stand up. You know what’s crazy? If you look at all the highest paid people in this room, when recognition is happening, none of them are sitting down. None of them are in the back of the room. They’re all up front here because they know part of their job is giving to the environment as much as it is getting from the environment. And I know for me that all I ever do is I pay attention to what the people ahead of me are doing. So if I see them doing it, I’m doing it.

If I don’t see them doing it, I’m not doing it. It’s really that simple, right? You just got to pay attention to what it is that the people ahead of you are doing, right? And I’ll leave you with this. I remember the story as I was making that point and I forgot it again. So here we go. But there’s three kinds of leaders in our business, right? There’s the winners. These are people who wake up frustrated every day and they go after it. There’s the potential winners. These are people who wake up frustrated, but don’t go after it. And then there’s the losers, right? I know. I grew up when we called people losers, right? You actually won or lost. But these are the people who don’t want to work and don’t want to compete. So, to all you brand new people, right?

Get up. Focus. Compete. Give it your best. Lean on your uplines, because I promise you, this business will change your life like it’s changed hours and so many people in this room. So thanks so much for listening. Thanks. Locke. Eyes. Proud to be your teammate.