Executive TLDR
Partnership multiplies accountability and growth
Apply job-level discipline to your Primerica business
Learn the system before expecting results
Recruit clients and build duplication
Plug into leadership and events consistently
Belief grows through action and exposure
Success works when you work the system
Video Summary
In this powerful leadership session, John Picone reinforces the principle that two are better than one when building a Primerica business. He credits partnership — both with his wife and with leadership — as a driving force behind long-term growth and stability.
Drawing from his experience as a police officer, Picone explains that success requires training, discipline, and structure. Just as law enforcement demands preparation and skill development, entrepreneurship in financial services requires learning how to sell, recruit, and create value for clients.
He challenges the audience to apply the same effort they give traditional jobs to their own business. Many professionals sacrifice time, energy, and ambition for someone else’s dream. In Primerica, that same effort builds ownership and scalable income.
Picone highlights the importance of recruiting clients, building licenses within families, and duplicating leadership behaviors. He stresses the value of plugging into uplines who have already achieved results and following the play called by experienced leaders.
Belief, he explains, increases through exposure, action, and participation in events. Success is not accidental — it is the product of disciplined execution, teamwork, and consistent recruiting.
The core message is clear: partnership accelerates growth. When individuals commit fully to the system and build together, the business expands faster and stronger.
FAQs
1. What is the main message of this training?
Partnership and teamwork are essential to sustainable business growth in Primerica.
2. Why does John Picone emphasize learning the system?
Mastering sales and recruiting creates long-term stability.
3. What does “recruit the client” mean?
Serve clients well and introduce them to the business opportunity.
4. Why are events important?
Events increase belief, sharpen skills, and build alignment.
5. How does partnership improve results?
Accountability and duplication accelerate growth.
6. What role does mentorship play?
Mentorship shortens the learning curve and strengthens decision-making.
7. How does belief develop?
Through consistent action and exposure to leadership.
8. Why compare business to law enforcement training?
Both require preparation, discipline, and structured learning.
9. What happens if you treat the business casually?
Inconsistent action leads to inconsistent results.
10. Why apply job-level work ethic here?
Ownership rewards disciplined effort more than employment does.
11. What makes Primerica different from a job?
It offers business ownership and scalable income through teamwork.
12. What drives long-term success?
Partnership, duplication, recruiting, and consistent execution.
Glossary
Duplication – The process of teaching teammates to repeat successful behaviors and systems.
Recruit the Client – Serving a client’s financial needs and introducing them to the opportunity.
Mentorship – Guidance from experienced leaders to accelerate development.
Partnership – Working collaboratively with teammates or spouses to build accountability and growth.
Transcript:
Listen, I want to welcome everybody to the big event. This is the event that you need to be at, because this is where you take notes, you improve, and you take it outside, because it doesn’t stop here. You got it? Like Patty said, you got to go after it. How many of you have jobs? Yeah, just over broke. I know all about that. What have you done for your job? You’ve gone in early, you stayed late. You’ve answered to who knows who about what. And did it work out for you? Is it working out for you? You need to apply the same energies that you’re giving up because you’re giving up your time, you’re giving up your family, you’re giving up your dreams and goals for somebody else’s business. You need to take that energy back and put it here. Build your businesses big.
Because once you build, will work for you, I promise you. And we’re working on that. So that being said, I’m going to introduce the one and only John Pacone. I’m sorry I took some time from you, babe, but here you go.
My beautiful wife, right? Thank you, man. So glad that she’s part of this business, man. You know, I always talk about partnership, right? Two are better than one no matter how you cut it, right? You know, this has been such a great business for us, right? You know, getting into business, you know, my friend John Vincenzi, who’s here, right? You know, I was, you know, one of his recruits. I was also his promotion exchange. But he chased me for about six, seven years, right, Just to sit down, just to come over my house to talk about this business. And, you know, I started off by being a client first, right? I had some couple of bad things going on, and, you know, became a client right away.
Then the next day, you know, I was forced into this business, and, you know, I just never looked back, right? I was willing to learn it. One thing is I was willing to learn it. And, you know, I’m going to tell you right now, you heard a lot about that from Hector lamarque, right? You know, you got to learn it. You got to learn what you got to do. You got to learn how to sell. You got to learn how to create value is what you got to do, right? You know, I became a police officer, you know, when I turned 21, and, you know, we had to go through, you know, five and a half months, six months of an academy, right? We learned about law, police ethics, and police science.
And we had to run around a gym, you know, every day, you know, to get in shape and stay in shape, right? There was a break in period with that. You know, here I am, 21 years old, a shield and a gun and a radio, and, you know, on the street, you go, you know, I had to learn what we had to do. You know, I mean, I never had done that before, but, you know, there was a break in period, right? And, you know, listen, if, you know, if I slopped it up, they came and mopped it up, but they just didn’t want us to kill anybody. You can’t mop that up, right? Well, you can mop it up. You’re mopping them off the ground. But the bottom line is, you know, you get in trouble, right?
If you know, if you’re not in the right, you go to jail. I didn’t want to sit in a jail cell, so I made sure I learned what I had to do and what I couldn’t do. Just like this business, right? You know, one thing I. Listen, I wanted to run with this. And one thing we do is, you know, we love to help people. We get inspired by helping people. We get inspired by making a difference. Why? Because a difference was made to me. You know, I didn’t grow up. You know, Patty talks about, like, you know, there was a house there, right? I mean, we didn’t have a car until I was about eight years old. We lived in an apartment building. Okay. And, you know, and now we have, you know, we got three properties.
Two in Florida, one in New York, but we still live in New York. You know, I love Florida, but I’m not ready. You know, that’s like the last spot to me. You know, I don’t want to go down. I feel I might die too soon if I move down here, you know. You know, and we’re going down in a couple of weeks, but then we’re coming right back, and then we’ll go down again and come back. You know, I could take the snow and I don’t mind it, but, you know, it’s. It’s, you know, I’m just not ready for it, Right?
But, you know, but the bottom line is, you know, we’re here to build a business, and, you know, we’re definitely, you know, one thing we’re going to do is we’re definitely going to make a lot of money while we’re doing it, you know. You know, we got a lot of teammates right there we’re excited about. We got some new teammates we’re super excited about. You know, we got one teammate, you know, Juanita McMillan who’s right? Who, you know, who’s been a client of ours for about six, seven years. And she used to, you know, once she became a client, I used to talk to her about the business, and she used to run away from me, sort of like what I did with John Vincenzi. But you know what? You know, she got in the business a couple of months ago, got licensed.
She gets her mother licensed. You know, the brother’s about to be licensed. One brother, you know, a son’s license, the son’s friend’s license. You know, like in about a two week span, you know, she got about four or five licenses on the team. Okay? You know, you know, she’s got a family in the back there. She’s got, you know, kids and grandkids, great grandmother this, that and the other thing, right? But this is what this business is about, right? She couldn’t take all her kids, right? You know, she’s a retired cop herself. She couldn’t take all her kids into the precinct. You know, she couldn’t do that. But you could do that here on a Primerica trip, right? You know, you know, guys, right? You know, you got to take pride in learning, really, you know, what we do, okay?
You know, you know, going about it, making money while you’re building it, you know, recruiting people, you know, that’s not a bad way to go about it, right? Hey, listen, you’ll remain in a company and you won’t go broke. That’s one thing I can assure you, okay? You know, you got to learn how to recruit the client. You got to learn how to talk to your people and create value and recruit the client, right? You know, I heard what Keith with, you know, Chris H. Was talking about, right? You know, you know, we’re in a group text with them, you know, I look at Chris Houng as sort of like an upline in many ways, you know what I’m saying? Because, you know, when I came into business, you know, he was making $100,000.
You know, he’s making almost $2 million now, you know, I seen that book, you know what I’m saying? I mean, and it’s. It’s, you know, he’s probably, you know, gonna be 3, 4 million dollars over the next year or two, right? You know, so we love plugging into them. We love going into their events, you know what I’m saying? You know, plus he could use a cracker like me, right? You know what I’m saying? He could use a guy like, right hey, you know, I look at our up lines, right? Rain, Cara Costello, right? Whatever play they call, you know, even before they can get the sentence out, we’re in, you know. You know, they called a play, right? You know, they would. You know, we’re gonna have dinner. This, that and the other thing, right?
And stuff like that, you know, who are the leaders and the people that qualify for the dinner, right? And, you know, you heard Chris talk about, like, they had, you know, he had a party last night for his leaders, right? You know, this trip is costing us, right? Between the hotel rooms, right, and taking teammates to dinner and teammates, you know, taking them out, right? Well, it’s like. Like $3,000. Jesus Christ, if I wasn’t in this company, I couldn’t afford to pay that if I was still working for the city, all right?
Imagine that you take, you know, part of your team out for dinner, and then last night, you know, were hanging out by the bar, you know, picking up the bar tab and stuff like that, and, you know, the hotel room, which was cheap, but then after all the taxes and stuff like that’s over a thousand dollars, you know, like $3,000. You know, only in Primerica. I mean, if someone sprung down on me, like, 15, 18 years ago, oh, this is going to cost you $3,000. You know, it’d be going on a credit card. I’d have to pay it off over time. And you know how that goes, right? You’re paying some bank interest. John Picone don’t like to pay interest to anybody, you know, I mean, it’s. Listen, this is such a great life, right?
You know, we got a bunch of our teammates of law enforcement and, you know, you know, we’re trying to show them, you know, the belief, right? You got to get your belief level up. You know, we started in the beginning, remember? Everybody starts in the beginning. Everybody, Even. We did, right? Even the millionaires, right? They came in and, hey, you know, what? Is this gonna work? Is it not gonna work? It works if you work. It works if you work. Listen, you know, we work this like a job, you know, I work sometimes 15, 18 hours a day for the city, you know, I could work 15 hours for this. Okay? Look at the money we’re making, right? You know, we made almost 82,000 last month. We made over 80.
You know, I think the last five, six months in a row, we’re over 80,000. I can’t freaking believe it. Jesus. Jesus, man. Holy shit. It’s like it’s you know? Damn. You know, and now we’re in a new month, you know, so we got to work hard to, you know, to maintain and to pass what we’re doing, guys. So, you know, listen, we’re excited. Our team is excited. We’re excited for our team, man. Proud to be in business with everyone. Love you guys.
