2021-09-09_Biggest_Mistakes_-_Not_Selling_Aggressively
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:03.880 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:08.400 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:11.400 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:12.400 | I'm your host.
00:00:13.400 | Today on the show, I'm going to share with you one of the biggest financial mistakes
00:00:17.420 | that I have made as part of this overall series.
00:00:19.920 | I've got over half a dozen on my personal notes.
00:00:23.640 | I'm not sure that I'll share with you all of them, but I will choose some of them to
00:00:27.380 | share with you.
00:00:28.380 | I want to share one that's just simply timely because it actually came from a recent listener.
00:00:35.420 | The mistake is simply this.
00:00:37.580 | One of the biggest financial mistakes that I have made is not selling aggressively enough.
00:00:45.440 | Not aggressively selling and marketing myself, my products and services, others' products
00:00:52.680 | and services.
00:00:54.420 | The impetus for today's show came, I was recently communicating with a listener of the show
00:00:57.480 | and he was saying, "Joshua, one of the things I really appreciate about you is that you
00:01:01.080 | have been successful without engaging in heavy marketing.
00:01:06.000 | You haven't ever given yourself over to a lot of marketing.
00:01:09.720 | I really appreciate that."
00:01:11.280 | I responded back and I said, "Well, thank you that you appreciate it, but I consider
00:01:14.740 | that one of the biggest mistakes.
00:01:16.440 | It's a mistake that I regret making and it's a mistake that I don't intend to make in the
00:01:21.560 | future."
00:01:24.360 | While that may surprise you, I want to share with you because if that one listener thinks
00:01:27.800 | that perhaps you yourself might think that this is the case.
00:01:31.760 | I do not think that the way that I have done things is the way that I should have done
00:01:36.840 | things.
00:01:38.080 | I do not intend that the way that I have done things in the past is the way that I will
00:01:42.520 | do things in the future.
00:01:45.920 | Let me share with you some background, some background ideas, and let me share with you
00:01:50.320 | some analysis on this subject, on the topic of selling aggressively, on the topic of should
00:01:57.480 | you focus on selling aggressively.
00:02:01.680 | Because this is kind of a slippery argument to talk about and we often do appreciate things
00:02:07.400 | on multiple sides of the issue.
00:02:09.400 | Let me begin with my background and my story.
00:02:12.240 | First, if we went all the way back to my childhood, I was not raised in an environment in which
00:02:19.020 | I was taught to focus on money.
00:02:22.360 | I didn't come from a wealthy family.
00:02:25.320 | My parents were ordinary, hardworking, virtuous, middle-class people.
00:02:32.480 | They were strong, devout Christians, and so because of that, never in their lives would
00:02:40.000 | they ever have imagined putting money as their number one priority.
00:02:44.200 | They of course did value thrift, frugality, stewardship of resources, but they never would
00:02:50.580 | have made a decision where money was the number one thing.
00:02:54.660 | Never in my life have I ever seen my mom or my dad say, "Oh, look, money.
00:02:58.420 | I'm going to prioritize money over something else."
00:03:01.060 | If there was ever a list of things that had to be prioritized, if my dad was going to
00:03:07.100 | prioritize a relationship, if he had to choose between a relationship or making more money,
00:03:13.820 | he would choose the relationship every time.
00:03:16.700 | If my mom was going to choose between helping somebody and having more money, she would
00:03:19.900 | help somebody every time.
00:03:21.820 | My parents modeled for me an example of selfless sacrifice, pouring out their lives for others
00:03:28.860 | through their entire lifetime.
00:03:31.340 | Every bit of everything I have ever seen has been, I have observed my parents being generous
00:03:38.460 | to others, helping others, sharing with others, serving others, loving others, completely
00:03:42.820 | selflessly with no expectation of gain or return.
00:03:46.060 | And so I wasn't raised in an environment where money was the primary thing.
00:03:50.460 | I would say in addition to that, in and among Christian circles, the pursuit of money and
00:03:57.020 | the pursuit of wealth is often an uncomfortable subject for people to talk about.
00:04:01.740 | First, this is simply due to the reality of the various statements that exist in the Christian
00:04:08.660 | Bible and in Christian doctrine.
00:04:10.860 | You have many seemingly paradoxical statements related to money.
00:04:18.500 | You can pick up the Bible and depending on which particular statements you choose to
00:04:22.180 | emphasize, you can use those biblical statements to justify really almost any position that
00:04:27.860 | you want to justify.
00:04:29.980 | From everything from God's going to bless you and make you a multimillionaire if you'll
00:04:34.420 | just serve him and love him.
00:04:37.620 | It's all up to you.
00:04:38.620 | God helps those who help themselves.
00:04:40.460 | You shouldn't have any money.
00:04:41.580 | You shouldn't accumulate any kind of wealth.
00:04:43.340 | You should give it all away and go follow Jesus.
00:04:45.260 | You can, depending on which particular statements you want to emphasize, you can support all
00:04:50.220 | of those with scripture right there in black, white, and red.
00:04:54.640 | And so there's a good deal of discomfort in many Christian circles of talking about money
00:05:00.180 | because of these paradoxes.
00:05:03.020 | In general though, virtually all branches of the Christian religion are united in the
00:05:07.820 | fact that they don't believe that the pursuit of money should be the primary goal of life.
00:05:16.460 | You'll virtually never hear a knowledgeable Christian say, "Your number one primary goal
00:05:25.660 | of life should be to accumulate money."
00:05:28.500 | There's just simply overwhelming indications, overwhelming scriptural prohibition against
00:05:36.020 | that and an encouragement to focus on those things that are less ephemeral than great
00:05:41.260 | wealth.
00:05:42.260 | And so because of that, I was raised in that kind of culture.
00:05:45.500 | And since I adopted consciously and intentionally that worldview for myself, I have never been
00:05:51.820 | one who has prioritized money over any other particular thing.
00:05:56.060 | I've never been one who says, "My number one goal in life is to become rich."
00:06:01.960 | In addition, due to the influences that I came to appreciate, the consultants and the
00:06:09.400 | people that I sought after their advice, I always came to appreciate things like experiences
00:06:15.860 | over stuff.
00:06:16.860 | This is commonplace now.
00:06:18.020 | It was not perhaps in decades past, but today it's now commonplace that most people will
00:06:23.580 | say, "Oh, don't accumulate stuff, but accumulate experiences instead."
00:06:27.020 | I also have often gained inspiration from people who live well on little.
00:06:31.320 | I've always admired those who show, "Look, I can live a lifestyle that works really well
00:06:36.480 | on just a little bit of money."
00:06:38.000 | And so I came to think myself that, "You know what?
00:06:42.880 | I don't need a lot of money.
00:06:45.280 | I don't need a lot of money.
00:06:46.360 | I can do well on less, and I'll focus on my passions and my interests and the experiences."
00:06:51.840 | Now, furthermore, my own journey through selling, especially in the context of something like
00:06:58.380 | radical personal finance, was made more difficult due to my background and the general suspicion
00:07:04.520 | that I've experienced from multiple angles towards things like financial advice or investment
00:07:13.060 | advice, etc.
00:07:15.120 | When I was younger, I was very much on the consumer side of financial advice.
00:07:20.780 | And because I absorbed and consumed so much of that consumer-facing advice, the books
00:07:27.700 | about how to do it better yourself, how to do things cheaper, etc., I became suspicious
00:07:33.980 | of anybody who was involved in professional financial sales.
00:07:39.380 | I thought that financial advisors were largely a scam, insurance agents were going to rip
00:07:45.160 | you off.
00:07:46.160 | I became convinced that across the board, the whole industry was probably filled with
00:07:51.480 | charlatans and liars and cheats.
00:07:55.480 | And then I joined it.
00:07:57.700 | And so in 2008, when I first became a financial advisor, then I felt like I was wading into
00:08:07.920 | the lion's den, and I didn't really trust anybody.
00:08:11.080 | And what was more difficult is that I started in the segment of the industry which is more
00:08:16.360 | maligned and impugned than perhaps any other segment of the industry, which is life insurance
00:08:20.780 | sales.
00:08:21.780 | Jokes exist forever about life insurance sales and aggressive life insurance agents.
00:08:28.500 | And because prior to becoming a life insurance agent, I was heavily steeped in the doctrines
00:08:32.860 | of "buy term insurance and invest the difference," and I was convinced that you should buy term
00:08:37.340 | and invest the difference, and that anybody who believed in whole life insurance or anybody
00:08:41.020 | who tried to sell universal life insurance was just a scammer and a crook who was trying
00:08:44.760 | to take more of your money away in the form of a bigger commission, a fat commission paycheck,
00:08:48.740 | and they didn't care about your long-term wealth and well-being.
00:08:52.220 | And it was very difficult for me to overcome that.
00:08:55.940 | I was never, even my entire time in the insurance business, I was never an aggressive salesman
00:09:03.840 | of whole life insurance because of those lingering just years of indoctrination to the cult of
00:09:10.020 | "buy term and invest the difference."
00:09:12.140 | Now I did become an enthusiastic proponent of whole life insurance in appropriate situations,
00:09:18.020 | but I never became an aggressive salesman of it.
00:09:22.180 | And that fits into even the conversation today.
00:09:28.000 | But along the way, being given the fact that I was earning my living based upon commissions
00:09:34.740 | from the sale of life insurance, from the sale of annuities, from the sale of mutual
00:09:40.580 | funds, and that I became a fee-based financial advisor and I started to earn fees based upon
00:09:47.260 | the management of money, I was always sensitive of the fact that I had conflicts of interest.
00:09:53.980 | And I was always jealous of people that didn't have those perceived conflicts of interest.
00:09:59.300 | It bugged me when I was a financial advisor that someone would come into my office and
00:10:03.300 | they would say something to me and they would say, "Well, Clark Howard says such and such,"
00:10:08.020 | or "Dave Ramsey says such and such," or "Susie Orman says such and such," or "Jim
00:10:11.620 | Kramer says such and such."
00:10:13.460 | And I always felt inferior to those people because I thought, "Well, those people are
00:10:19.420 | saying what they have to say and they're able to say it without any conflicts of interest."
00:10:24.140 | They don't have any conflicts of interest, so they might be able to be completely true
00:10:27.660 | and honest and transparent and right, whereas I have conflicts of interest.
00:10:31.340 | I get paid based upon the sale of a product.
00:10:34.300 | And I worked the very best that I could to always manage those conflicts of interest
00:10:39.820 | and always represent the products that I represented honestly and forthrightly and give full disclosure
00:10:48.860 | and point out conflicts of interest.
00:10:50.660 | I did the best that I could, but I always knew there's a real truth to that saying,
00:10:55.580 | that it becomes—it's very difficult to get a man to see the truth if his salary depends
00:11:00.660 | upon it, right?
00:11:01.660 | I just butchered that phrase, but you know what I'm referring to, right?
00:11:05.060 | That it's very hard to get a man to see the truth that's in front of his own eyes if his
00:11:09.060 | salary depends upon his not seeing it.
00:11:11.660 | And I wondered for years, "Am I really being honest?
00:11:14.220 | Am I genuinely being honest and truthful in my understanding here, or am I experiencing
00:11:20.180 | this conflict of interest?"
00:11:22.140 | And so when in 2013 I saw an off-ramp from that industry into—meaning from the world
00:11:30.300 | of commission sales and fees for financial advice, and I saw an off-ramp into what I
00:11:36.820 | had always admired, right?
00:11:38.540 | These titans of moral certitude, these men who have the ability to sit back and impartially
00:11:45.780 | judge the industry without any conflicts of interest, I found that amazingly attractive.
00:11:53.580 | So so attractive.
00:11:55.260 | Because I thought, "Wow, I could be that disconnected person.
00:11:58.580 | I could be that impartial observer, that knowledgeable financial advisor who can sit back and who
00:12:04.780 | can impassionately—excuse me, dispassionately judge the truth of various claims, etc."
00:12:13.700 | And so for me, when I became host of Radical Personal Finance, it felt like a tremendous
00:12:18.740 | relief.
00:12:20.240 | And one of my big concerns in the beginning of my business was I didn't want to recreate
00:12:25.860 | conflicts of interest.
00:12:27.840 | And so I picked up this general belief.
00:12:29.900 | I said, "I'm going to be honest."
00:12:31.380 | I made one of my early commitments to myself and to my audience.
00:12:34.420 | I said, "I may not always know the answer.
00:12:37.380 | I may not always get everything right.
00:12:40.300 | I'm going to make mistakes.
00:12:42.000 | But I'm going to be honest.
00:12:43.340 | That's what I can control.
00:12:44.660 | I can choose to be honest.
00:12:46.660 | I can choose to be impartial and honest."
00:12:50.660 | And that's a commitment that I have made and that I have worked hard to keep to, even as
00:12:56.580 | I'm telling you shows on my mistakes.
00:13:01.060 | It's part of that early commitment to simply be honest.
00:13:04.600 | But in this case, I felt so relieved to be out of the world of those conflicts of interest
00:13:09.980 | that I reveled in my impartiality.
00:13:14.300 | It just felt so good.
00:13:16.060 | And it fit my personality.
00:13:17.060 | Now, combine that with the fact that I had fairly modest financial goals.
00:13:20.900 | I never set out to build an eight or nine-figure business.
00:13:24.580 | I just wanted to make at the time, I just wanted to make $100,000 a year for my laptop.
00:13:28.140 | And I thought, "I can totally do that."
00:13:29.460 | And so I'll enjoy this total freedom, this total freedom from conflicts of interest.
00:13:36.220 | And I'll just be able to be that impartial observer.
00:13:38.980 | And for me, it was largely an ego boost, right?
00:13:40.980 | It was pride.
00:13:42.560 | It was a matter of personal pride that I'm going to be more righteous than all those
00:13:47.660 | other people out there who are still making their living on commissions.
00:13:51.260 | And I had this kind of self-righteous attitude about my ability to be impartial.
00:13:56.620 | And I loved it.
00:13:57.620 | I loved it.
00:13:59.240 | In addition, I had some strong questions about other people's opinions.
00:14:08.900 | And as I was watching this revolution in content and media content that I've been a part of
00:14:18.260 | with the growth of independent media, I'm watching this and I'm observing it and I'm
00:14:22.660 | saying, "You know what?
00:14:24.660 | This is awesome.
00:14:25.660 | I love this lack of conflicts of interest."
00:14:27.620 | I wanted, from the very beginning, I wanted to keep that sense of impartiality.
00:14:33.140 | I wanted to keep the lack of conflicts.
00:14:38.620 | So I was heavily invested.
00:14:42.300 | I chose to be ideologically heavily invested into models like listener support.
00:14:49.540 | I came out and I said, "I'm going to do this with just total listener support.
00:14:56.260 | I'm going to do everything for free."
00:14:58.220 | When I was a brand new host of Radical Personal Finance, my goal was, "I'm going to give away
00:15:02.940 | everything I know for free.
00:15:04.260 | That way, it can help the people who are the most disadvantaged."
00:15:07.900 | I've said again and again, I always had a vision.
00:15:10.020 | Seventeen-year-old kid in the hood has a phone, finds my show.
00:15:13.860 | I'm going to teach that kid how to be rich.
00:15:16.460 | That's my goal.
00:15:17.860 | And I wanted to do it.
00:15:18.980 | And so I poured myself out.
00:15:20.860 | I tried very, very hard to try to do that.
00:15:23.900 | And then I tried to set up funding models for me to be able to make a living directly
00:15:30.360 | from that content.
00:15:31.740 | For about the first eight months or so of Radical Personal Finance, I worked a side
00:15:35.700 | job which paid my bills while I built the show.
00:15:40.080 | Then my first goal was to build a member support system.
00:15:43.260 | So I launched in the early days, I launched a membership site where many of my listeners
00:15:47.900 | were so generous to join that.
00:15:50.540 | And I quickly started being able to make money.
00:15:52.500 | It took me one year and after the first year, I've been able to generate all of my income
00:15:56.580 | directly from Radical Personal Finance.
00:15:59.820 | Then along the way, so the membership support thing, I really, really wanted it to work.
00:16:04.740 | And so I tried, worked at it, worked at it, worked at it.
00:16:07.340 | I really wanted it to work because I wanted the sense of ideological purity.
00:16:13.100 | For my own ego and my own kind of sense of personal righteousness, I wanted to have this
00:16:20.260 | ideological purity of saying, "Yeah, I don't sell anything.
00:16:23.300 | Yeah, I don't sell anything, right?
00:16:26.380 | My listeners support me."
00:16:28.200 | And that fit my ego.
00:16:30.020 | It was a goal that I had.
00:16:32.100 | And again, I did it, but I really tried at it.
00:16:34.980 | So then my membership site, it wasn't working.
00:16:37.180 | I eventually took that down and I turned to Patreon.
00:16:39.140 | At the time, Patreon had newly launched and I was like, "I'm going to make this Patreon
00:16:43.180 | thing work."
00:16:44.180 | I loved it.
00:16:45.180 | I thought, "Oh, this would just be so wonderful, right?
00:16:46.940 | You'll build all this listener supported content and you'll be supported directly by your listeners.
00:16:52.860 | There's no conflicts of interest.
00:16:54.500 | It allows me to do what I love, which is to turn on a microphone and speak and teach."
00:16:58.580 | I just thought, "This is going to be awesome."
00:17:00.660 | And so I really invested heavily, a lot of time.
00:17:03.380 | I promoted it heavily.
00:17:04.540 | I invested a lot of time into it.
00:17:07.220 | And year after year went by and I was deeply focused on the listener support model.
00:17:15.820 | Well, I consider the listener support model a total failure.
00:17:19.700 | A few years ago, I spoke at FinCon on the topic and I said, "Look, I've made..."
00:17:24.740 | I can't remember how much it was at the time, but six figures, multiple...
00:17:29.300 | I can't remember.
00:17:30.380 | But I put all my earnings from Patreon up on the screen and I said, "Look, this is how
00:17:34.420 | much money I've made on Patreon."
00:17:35.700 | And I was in the top...
00:17:36.700 | At the time, I was in the top few percent of the top tier of anybody who was making
00:17:42.100 | any money on Patreon.
00:17:43.820 | And I said, "So I have succeeded," if by success we mean here that at the time, I was among
00:17:51.940 | all financial podcasters and people out there who were making the most money on Patreon.
00:17:56.100 | I said, "Look, I've succeeded."
00:17:58.180 | And I said from the stage, I said, "I don't encourage you to do this.
00:18:01.220 | It doesn't work."
00:18:02.220 | All right, you get this tiny, tiny percentage of the audience who actually supports you.
00:18:06.900 | And I said, "Forgive me, and I don't mean this sounding ungrateful.
00:18:11.660 | I'm just trying to be honest."
00:18:13.380 | But I told the people at FinCon, I said, "It's the worst possible way for you to try to monetize
00:18:21.100 | your work."
00:18:22.100 | I said, "It just doesn't work.
00:18:25.300 | And it will hurt you if you go down this road."
00:18:27.820 | I was very conscious of the fact that I had wasted several years trying to maintain this
00:18:32.860 | sense of impartiality and trying to avoid these conflicts of interest.
00:18:37.420 | I had wasted several years.
00:18:41.420 | Now fast forward, then I started to make, I switched and I started, okay, well, I could
00:18:45.540 | do ads.
00:18:46.540 | And there've been many times in radical personal finance where I did ads.
00:18:48.840 | But I really, again, wanted that sense of impartiality.
00:18:50.860 | I wanted to be able to make a personal endorsement of every advertiser that I brought on the
00:18:56.340 | show.
00:18:57.340 | And so people approached me to run ads and I would say, "Oh, no, I got to personally
00:19:00.140 | approve of it.
00:19:01.140 | If it's going to go on my show, it's going to be a sense of personal endorsement."
00:19:04.220 | And so I did some ads and I made money with ads.
00:19:07.180 | But because of the standards of I'm going to personally endorse all this stuff, I walked
00:19:11.660 | away from so much stuff.
00:19:13.300 | I walked away, I did very few affiliate deals, right, where I promote somebody else's products
00:19:17.380 | or somebody else's services.
00:19:19.060 | I did very few affiliate deals because I thought, well, I just want to be, I want that sense
00:19:22.540 | of purity.
00:19:24.500 | And to this day, right, most of the things that I have promoted here on radical personal
00:19:28.460 | finance have been my own products and my own services.
00:19:31.980 | And I'm thankful because those things have been profitable.
00:19:35.000 | But along the way, I have not made nearly as much money as I could have made.
00:19:40.380 | It's been a very expensive financial mistake.
00:19:43.100 | Today, I can face it square on and say, you know what, doing that again, I would not do
00:19:47.700 | it.
00:19:48.700 | Let me just share with you something that you should know, though.
00:19:51.140 | I'm trying to share my experiences, but if you're one who just simply rejects what I
00:19:54.540 | have to say and says, I've got to prove it out for myself, I understand that because
00:19:58.660 | that's largely my personality.
00:20:00.580 | I like to listen carefully to what other people say.
00:20:03.160 | But if I have a sense of conviction about something, a sense that this is something
00:20:06.580 | that I want to do, this is something that's right, then I have this kind of press where
00:20:11.540 | I got to learn this myself.
00:20:13.580 | I don't consider that as character strength.
00:20:15.460 | I consider it something that should be managed, but it is something that is true about me.
00:20:19.540 | And so if you had told me all this years ago, I don't know that I would have been willing
00:20:23.860 | to not try what I did because at the time it seemed important to me.
00:20:28.020 | It was what I wanted to do, and I wanted to have that sense of impartiality that for me
00:20:33.340 | was very important to my ego.
00:20:35.620 | So I understand if you want to do this, but I'll tell you today that I consider this one
00:20:42.140 | of the biggest mistakes.
00:20:43.580 | Going forward, I will change.
00:20:47.140 | Now it's hard for me to change.
00:20:49.060 | It's always hard for all of us, but it's hard for me to go from somebody who was never aggressive,
00:20:54.220 | who was never kind of an aggressive, pushy salesman.
00:20:57.140 | It's hard for me to change my personality and my character to become the kind of strong,
00:21:04.100 | pressing, aggressive marketer that I desire to be.
00:21:09.660 | And I'll tell you why I can say without fear of error that I desire to be that person.
00:21:15.980 | The reason is this.
00:21:18.900 | If you think that a sense of impartiality is what you want, what I want to tell you
00:21:24.780 | is that the reason that I desired that objective impartiality,
00:21:35.420 | that lack of conflicts of interest, was because I wanted to help people.
00:21:40.900 | I genuinely, desperately want to help people.
00:21:46.140 | I want the world to be a richer place.
00:21:50.460 | I want to make an impact on the finances of the world so that many millions of people
00:21:59.980 | are wealthier in years to come than they are today.
00:22:05.420 | Now I want that in a non-financial context, but I also very much want it in a financial
00:22:11.180 | context.
00:22:12.380 | And I do not believe in a world of limited resources.
00:22:15.460 | I believe that there is no reason why in decades to come, tens of millions of us cannot be
00:22:23.140 | enjoying a much more wealthy lifestyle.
00:22:28.880 | And I want to be part of that.
00:22:31.380 | Genuinely want to help bring wealth to the world.
00:22:33.900 | If you look back over the last century and you see how many advances we have made as
00:22:40.060 | a human population in the world, it is absolutely staggering.
00:22:44.420 | And I'm excited to see what things will look like a century from now.
00:22:48.420 | And so I want to be part of that.
00:22:50.100 | I want to be a catalyst for that kind of change.
00:22:56.420 | I thought that by removing my conflicts of interest I could be a more effective catalyst.
00:23:05.100 | But what has actually been true is I have been dramatically less effective because I
00:23:13.020 | have never had the financial resources to expand my influence and reach the people that
00:23:19.780 | I most want to reach.
00:23:23.060 | See in order for a business to work, the business has to make profit.
00:23:29.300 | A business has to make profit in order for it to work.
00:23:35.220 | And I understand that quickly your brain goes, "Well Joshua, what about a non-profit?"
00:23:39.460 | We'll come back to those in a moment.
00:23:41.500 | But I am convinced that one of the most important things is that any activity make a sufficient
00:23:49.340 | profit for it to be worth it doing for the owners.
00:23:54.500 | A business that doesn't bring in enough profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue
00:24:00.980 | its operation will always close.
00:24:05.620 | And I came many times very close to closing my business because it didn't make enough
00:24:13.380 | profit.
00:24:15.440 | And looking back when I reflect on eight years of work, I should be miles ahead of where
00:24:22.020 | I am today in terms of the number of people that are on my team, in terms of the number
00:24:26.980 | of people that we impact on a daily basis, in terms of the teaching that we're able to
00:24:32.060 | bring to people who need it the most.
00:24:36.860 | And along the way, one of the most important reasons that I'm not having that kind of
00:24:45.020 | impact yet is that I did not prioritize maximum profit.
00:24:52.600 | If I had prioritized maximum profit, I would have been able to serve many, many more people
00:25:01.220 | than I have up until this date.
00:25:04.780 | So why didn't I prioritize maximum profit?
00:25:07.100 | I didn't focus on marketing.
00:25:09.020 | I didn't focus on selling.
00:25:11.060 | I always thought, "Well, if you build it good enough, they'll come."
00:25:13.660 | And it is true.
00:25:15.820 | But if you'll build it good enough and then market it like crazy, more and more will come.
00:25:22.300 | And if you have something good, you owe it to people to do your very best to market it.
00:25:29.180 | Now, here's what I've learned.
00:25:32.740 | I have often used lack of marketing desire, a lack of push for desire, to allow me to
00:25:41.460 | get away with more mediocrity than I'm capable of.
00:25:45.500 | Meaning that a lot of times, if I had dedicated myself and said, "You know what?
00:25:49.660 | I'm going to build something that's truly outstanding, truly outstanding, and I'm going
00:25:55.060 | to market it like crazy," then that puts within you a higher expectation of desire to do better,
00:26:03.580 | to create something better, because your name is behind it.
00:26:08.860 | Whereas if you kind of give yourself the permission to say, "I'm going to create something, but
00:26:12.020 | I'm not going to really market it all that much," then you're kind of okay with failure
00:26:15.420 | and you don't put yourself out there.
00:26:16.660 | You don't risk it as much as you should.
00:26:19.780 | And so, along the way, I just see again and again how I've been hurt by this lack of marketing.
00:26:26.100 | And then the lack of revenue, because you don't market as hard and as aggressively as
00:26:31.820 | you can, the lack of revenue causes you to not be able to expand, not be able to expand
00:26:38.060 | your abilities, not be able to expand your operations, not to be able to impact people
00:26:42.100 | with better, higher quality advice, better, higher quality services.
00:26:51.460 | I recommend that you market hard.
00:26:54.540 | Now, there are a lot of people just like me who were never comfortable with marketing
00:26:59.980 | hard.
00:27:00.980 | I've always been a little bit jealous of people who just had the self-confidence and the ability
00:27:05.740 | just to market hard, to sell aggressively.
00:27:08.740 | I was never that guy who I could walk over and say, "Hey, how are you?
00:27:11.500 | Who are you?
00:27:12.500 | Do you want any life insurance?"
00:27:13.500 | That was never me.
00:27:14.500 | I was always more timid.
00:27:17.200 | But what I have learned is if you market hard, you have the ability to help people.
00:27:24.620 | And the people that you're going to help are actually going to appreciate that marketing.
00:27:28.900 | Now, what I observe in personal finance circles is there are a whole lot of people who are
00:27:34.580 | dedicated to frugality, which I appreciate and have appreciated.
00:27:38.740 | I think it's overwrought, overstated, but I've appreciated that.
00:27:42.700 | But I've also come to realize that a lot of them are dedicated to poverty.
00:27:48.940 | I don't say that lightly.
00:27:50.420 | A lot of people who I used to think were just dedicated to frugality, I actually believe
00:27:54.460 | are dedicated to poverty.
00:27:57.300 | They're dedicated to poverty and they don't appreciate money-making.
00:28:01.240 | So they're caught in this existential crisis where they want to be wealthy, they want to
00:28:04.460 | be financially independent, but they don't want to actually buy anything or they don't
00:28:08.140 | want to actually sell anything.
00:28:10.060 | And I think this leads to this really bad personality disorder where you wind up becoming
00:28:15.900 | a hoarder, you wind up becoming a miser.
00:28:18.920 | And what I have realized is I don't want to be that.
00:28:21.140 | I want to be someone through whom money flows dramatically.
00:28:25.500 | I don't want to be someone for whom money comes in and then it just gets stuck aside.
00:28:30.360 | And I find this interesting because as I observe even political debates and political arguments,
00:28:38.460 | I observe that I think there's more—and I'm just speaking here from a perspective
00:28:42.400 | of reading in some personal finance conversations, fret threads, public posts, groups, etc.—but
00:28:55.060 | there are more progressive, liberal, left-leaning people who are more miserly with their investments
00:29:08.480 | than so many billionaires are.
00:29:11.640 | There are more people who are liberal progressives who believe in spreading the wealth around,
00:29:16.860 | who believe that the accumulation of wealth is morally not a good thing, and yet all they
00:29:23.080 | do is collect as much money as they possibly can and then put it in their 401(k) so they
00:29:28.120 | can become financially independent.
00:29:30.380 | They don't build anything, they don't invest anything, they just put it aside in their
00:29:34.120 | 401(k), put it in their bank account, put it in their house, and they don't grow.
00:29:39.520 | Meanwhile you turn—and I study billionaires a lot of times—and you look and you say,
00:29:42.760 | "What is so-and-so doing?"
00:29:43.760 | And you're looking and you're like, "This guy doesn't have a thing in his stock account,
00:29:47.200 | he doesn't have a 401(k)."
00:29:49.320 | Everything is invested back into a business over here, creating something there.
00:29:53.560 | I'm not trying to argue this too deeply, I'm saying that what shocked me is I realized
00:29:59.400 | that while I personally identify as a capitalist and I believe that capitalism is single-handedly
00:30:06.960 | the most effective tool that we have ever discovered for bringing billions of people
00:30:12.980 | around the world out of total abject poverty, I've been an awful capitalist.
00:30:22.360 | And that pisses me off.
00:30:27.800 | It angers me to find myself having been in a situation where I didn't pursue the things
00:30:35.840 | that I thought I believed in.
00:30:39.600 | I always believed in the power of capitalism, but I didn't actually demonstrate my belief
00:30:44.680 | by my actions.
00:30:46.720 | I said that I had faith in the power of capitalism, but I didn't demonstrate my faith by my actions.
00:30:53.920 | Rather, by my actions I looked and acted as though wealth was something to be shunned,
00:30:59.320 | wealth was something to be eschewed, wealth was something that you just simply went out
00:31:03.920 | and got a little bit and then hoarded it all up a side because after all it might end.
00:31:08.680 | And when I've realized that, it's like, no, that is not me.
00:31:11.000 | I will not live that way.
00:31:13.560 | I will not be that frugal man who goes out and says, "Oh, you know what?
00:31:19.200 | Something's going to end and after all this could just all fall apart."
00:31:23.960 | I want to be somebody not to whom money flows and stays there like dead stinking water.
00:31:31.520 | I want to be somebody through whom money flows.
00:31:36.840 | And I found myself again and again and again over the last few years finding situations
00:31:40.480 | where I'm like, "If I could just, if I could write a check and invest a six or seven figure
00:31:46.800 | sum into this particular thing, it could make a difference in the world."
00:31:50.240 | And I find myself unable to do that.
00:31:52.780 | And that pisses me off.
00:31:56.800 | Forgive the vulgar speech, but it really does.
00:32:05.460 | And there's no excuse for it.
00:32:08.220 | Absolutely no excuse for it, except that I was committed to this self-righteous sense
00:32:12.800 | of impartiality, objectivity, no conflicts of interest.
00:32:21.640 | It's not healthy.
00:32:22.920 | It's not healthy.
00:32:25.680 | Self-righteousness is ugly.
00:32:27.880 | It's really ugly.
00:32:29.880 | And it's not healthy.
00:32:30.880 | It's not a healthy place to live.
00:32:32.480 | It's not a healthy place to be.
00:32:34.040 | It's not.
00:32:37.220 | I don't believe that...
00:32:40.260 | And one more comment on kind of conflicts of interest.
00:32:46.960 | It took me years to the point where I could really trust my instincts and trust my perspectives.
00:32:51.500 | Because I do think that the...
00:32:53.620 | I mean, there's a reason why we have that term "conflict of interest," right?
00:32:57.460 | You're involved in a certain area of the marketplace.
00:33:00.100 | You're involved in something.
00:33:03.180 | And if you stand to make a good deal of money, it can be a real temptation to do that.
00:33:09.420 | But I think that probably the majority of people...
00:33:17.300 | I don't know what percentage to put on it, right?
00:33:19.540 | There are sociopaths who just don't understand how their actions are going to influence other
00:33:27.180 | people.
00:33:28.180 | I think most people are actually more honest than they're often given credit for.
00:33:33.580 | That was what surprised me when I went into the life insurance business.
00:33:37.820 | I went into the life insurance business expecting to meet a whole bunch of crooks and charlatans
00:33:41.980 | and people who were just out to make more money on commissions.
00:33:45.260 | And I met a whole lot of people that really loved making commissions.
00:33:48.620 | But they genuinely believed that what they were doing was good.
00:33:53.500 | They genuinely believed that what they were doing was right.
00:33:56.320 | And I realized that so many of the arguments that people would have about things are just
00:34:01.220 | academic things where it's about to make themselves feel good, right?
00:34:03.980 | You tell somebody, "Oh, you shouldn't invest in such and such because there's something
00:34:11.480 | else theoretically that's better."
00:34:14.300 | And maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
00:34:18.020 | But here's what's funny.
00:34:19.020 | Earlier I said the "buy, term, invest, the difference" argument.
00:34:21.660 | This is one of the most popular arguments in personal finance.
00:34:24.420 | What should you do?
00:34:25.420 | Buy, term, invest, the difference.
00:34:27.060 | I would say that anybody who's ever said to somebody they shouldn't buy whole life insurance
00:34:36.140 | and instead should buy stocks owes an apology for ever having advised anybody to buy stocks
00:34:45.660 | when they could have bought Bitcoin.
00:34:52.220 | If you've ever told someone what you should do is you should not buy whole life insurance.
00:34:56.540 | Rather what you should do is you should buy this stock market index fund over here because
00:35:01.100 | you'll come out better.
00:35:02.100 | So buy, term, and invest, the difference in stocks.
00:35:04.580 | Well, you better go back to every person you've ever said that to and apologize for not having
00:35:11.260 | told them to buy Bitcoin because you did them a huge disservice, as did I, right?
00:35:15.900 | I did a show on why I missed Bitcoin.
00:35:18.840 | So I've apologized for that.
00:35:21.580 | If you've ever said that you owe every person you've said that an apology to.
00:35:25.260 | Now if you reject that, if you bristle at that, if you say, "Wait, wait, wait, wait,
00:35:28.580 | wait, wait, hold on a second.
00:35:30.060 | Bitcoin is not equivalent to the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund.
00:35:35.100 | These are not equivalent investments."
00:35:37.540 | Then you've just found the answer to the classic argument over should you buy whole life insurance
00:35:42.700 | or term insurance.
00:35:44.380 | These are not equivalent investments.
00:35:47.560 | They are different things.
00:35:49.560 | They're fundamentally different, unique things.
00:35:53.760 | It's not a matter of right or wrong.
00:35:55.380 | It's a matter of fit.
00:35:56.380 | It's a matter of understanding what's appropriate in a situation.
00:35:59.740 | And when I finally understood that and I went back and realized, I looked at it and said,
00:36:04.620 | "You know what?
00:36:05.620 | You do have people of different conviction."
00:36:08.560 | My conviction when I was a life insurance agent and I sold disability insurance and
00:36:12.940 | life insurance, long-term care insurance, my conviction level changed about insurance
00:36:17.760 | products because of the experiences that I had.
00:36:24.300 | When you sell life insurance, you tend to wind up paying more attention when people
00:36:27.780 | die.
00:36:29.840 | When you sell life insurance, you wind up understanding how much people screw up their
00:36:33.140 | own investments.
00:36:35.100 | And so you wind up having a sense of conviction about it.
00:36:38.640 | And that changed me over time where I realized, "You know what?
00:36:41.420 | 80% of these people that I work with are not crooks.
00:36:44.820 | I thought they were, but they're not.
00:36:47.300 | They're just ordinary men and women doing their very best to give good advice based
00:36:52.900 | upon the way that they see the world.
00:36:57.780 | Just like you and just like me."
00:37:02.240 | So those conflicts of interest that we're all trying to seek to avoid, those conflicts
00:37:07.160 | of interest are not something that can ever be avoided.
00:37:12.060 | There's always going to be conflicts of interest.
00:37:14.300 | And I don't know any way to handle them other than to acknowledge them, verbalize them,
00:37:20.220 | disclose them, and try to manage them.
00:37:22.260 | We all have conflicts of interest.
00:37:25.420 | And what do you do?
00:37:26.500 | I don't like dishonesty.
00:37:27.860 | I'm the guy who...
00:37:34.060 | One version of jokes.
00:37:35.060 | Don't ever tell Joshua Sheets a joke about...
00:37:37.860 | Never mind.
00:37:40.180 | The point is that you're never going to escape those conflicts of interest.
00:37:47.020 | And what I have learned is if you want genuinely the ability to ignore those conflicts of interest,
00:37:56.900 | it helps a whole lot to be rich.
00:38:02.300 | The brand new salesman for whatever product has a hard time walking away from potential
00:38:09.700 | money, but the wealthy salesman has an easier time of saying, "Yeah, this is a situation
00:38:16.660 | in which it's a good fit is where it's not a good fit."
00:38:19.260 | And so if you want to help yourself avoid those conflicts of interest, poverty is not
00:38:22.940 | the way to do it.
00:38:24.140 | Rather, wealth is the way to do it.
00:38:26.380 | And you can become wealthy and you can sell hard without fear if you understand that.
00:38:35.620 | Now what about aggressive sales?
00:38:38.300 | Here's what I have realized from not doing aggressive sales.
00:38:43.860 | You do aggressive sales if you actually genuinely want to move people to action.
00:38:50.580 | I think all of us have found people who were too aggressive for us at a certain point in
00:38:56.420 | time.
00:38:57.960 | Somebody who pushed us to make a decision.
00:38:59.980 | Somebody who pushed us to say yes to something, to buy something, to sign up for that.
00:39:05.420 | And we've often felt like, "Oh, that guy was just too aggressive for me."
00:39:12.460 | But then probably all of us have experienced a time where we felt like, "You know what?
00:39:17.660 | I'm really glad that I acted.
00:39:19.420 | I'm really glad that I made the decision."
00:39:22.280 | And what I've discovered is that fear of being forcefully sold to is another poverty character
00:39:29.240 | trait by background.
00:39:33.180 | I remember when I was a new financial advisor, I was scared to talk to rich people.
00:39:39.500 | And I thought that rich people were going to be the hardest people to reach.
00:39:42.220 | I thought that they were going to be the people who didn't want to talk to me, who weren't
00:39:45.140 | interested in what I had to say.
00:39:46.740 | I was scared of talking to rich people.
00:39:49.780 | And I thought that poor people were going to be easier to talk to because poor people
00:39:53.260 | needed money.
00:39:54.260 | Well, I learned pretty quickly that it was the exact opposite.
00:39:57.620 | Poor people were often the most difficult people to talk to, whereas rich people were
00:40:01.280 | often the easiest.
00:40:02.820 | To this day, I could go back and I could give list after list of wealthy person who I would
00:40:07.780 | pick them up, pick up the phone, call them, say, "Hey, can I come and tell you what I
00:40:10.540 | do and what I have to share and blah, blah, blah?"
00:40:13.340 | And they would say, "Yeah, come on in."
00:40:14.680 | And what I learned is, right, they might only give me five minutes, but they say, "Hey,
00:40:18.180 | listen, Joshua, what do you got?
00:40:19.180 | I'm really interested.
00:40:20.180 | Show me what you got.
00:40:21.180 | Tell me about it."
00:40:22.940 | Whereas poor people, "No, no, no, no, no, I've got a guy," right?
00:40:25.300 | Or, "I'm not interested in any of that," or, "I don't need that right now."
00:40:28.600 | And I've come to believe that there is a dramatic reason why this is the case.
00:40:33.740 | And I don't know whether it's causation or correlation, right?
00:40:36.860 | Is a wealthy person open to hearing what people have to say about money because he has a lot
00:40:43.380 | of money, or did a wealthy person become wealthy because he was open to hearing from a lot
00:40:50.820 | of people what they had to say about money?
00:40:52.380 | I don't know, but I think my bet is that it's probably more causation than correlation.
00:40:58.220 | And I've realized, if you go back, right, think about, I was talking about Bitcoin,
00:41:02.780 | right?
00:41:03.780 | It's the most amazing example, astonishing example that we have right now of dramatic
00:41:07.400 | wealth change.
00:41:09.100 | The people who have become wealthy on Bitcoin became so because they were open to hearing
00:41:14.060 | new ideas and they were open to thinking about things and they were open to trying things.
00:41:21.160 | The people who didn't become wealthy were closed-minded.
00:41:23.500 | Now, I raise my hand and confess, I have many, many times been closed-minded.
00:41:30.740 | Closed-mindedness has not served me.
00:41:35.100 | Open-mindedness has.
00:41:36.100 | Now, what about buying things?
00:41:37.940 | I remember a number of years ago, I went to a gym.
00:41:42.140 | I went to an LA Fitness in the United States and I wanted to sign up and I wanted to go
00:41:48.900 | and buy a gym membership.
00:41:50.860 | And so, like many people, I walked into the gym planning to sign up for their 1495, whatever
00:41:56.540 | it was, LA Fitness membership.
00:41:59.780 | And I walked in and told them to do that and they started to take my information and one
00:42:03.640 | of the personal trainers started a sales process and wound up trying very aggressively to sell
00:42:10.120 | me a personal training package.
00:42:14.020 | And I remember sitting in the sales presentation and my instinct was to run away from the personal
00:42:18.340 | training package because after all, I'm Mr. Frugal, right?
00:42:20.540 | Why would I spend, whatever it was, $250 a month or $300 a month?
00:42:24.380 | Why would I spend that when I could avoid that and just spend $14.95 a month?
00:42:31.300 | But I realized, I said, "Which is more expensive?
00:42:34.500 | The personal training package for $300 a month that I show up to or the 1495 gym membership
00:42:41.220 | that I never go to?"
00:42:43.460 | And in my lifetime, I'd signed up for so many 1495 or 2995 gym memberships that I never
00:42:48.260 | went to that it was just a total waste.
00:42:52.180 | But I showed up when I hired a personal trainer and had a lesson.
00:42:55.860 | Like, this is how life is.
00:42:56.940 | That 1495 is far more expensive.
00:43:00.740 | And the older I get, the more I realize the value and the importance of paying for things.
00:43:07.480 | The value and the importance of paying people for advice.
00:43:12.180 | One of the very best investments you could ever make with money is pay people for advice.
00:43:17.020 | Pay people for their time.
00:43:18.020 | If somebody's got something that you want, pay them money and get in where you can get
00:43:22.420 | it.
00:43:23.420 | It's the best thing you can do.
00:43:25.740 | Paying people for results.
00:43:27.420 | Buying things right.
00:43:29.700 | Again and again, I have come to just be convinced every time I make the so-called frugal decision,
00:43:36.100 | every time I cheap out on something, I lose.
00:43:40.740 | I lose.
00:43:42.220 | And I especially lose one of those most valuable things that I have, which is time.
00:43:47.620 | I've come to be convinced that people who bristle at being sold to, people who bristle
00:43:57.980 | at being marketed to, are generally losers who don't understand that quality things,
00:44:07.980 | quality life, quality services, quality products are worth having.
00:44:14.700 | They really are.
00:44:16.060 | Now there is a very clear dividing point as to should I be in this place or not.
00:44:23.380 | If you've got a $15 an hour job and you walk into a Rolls Royce dealership, that Rolls
00:44:31.860 | Royce dealer is not going to put on you an aggressive sales technique.
00:44:38.540 | He's not going to do it because it's going to be obvious to him, this guy can't buy a
00:44:41.780 | Rolls Royce.
00:44:42.780 | He's going to let you walk around, look at the cars and you're going to be on your way.
00:44:47.420 | But if you're the kind of guy who genuinely wants a Rolls Royce and whatever, it's going
00:44:51.500 | to cost you $400,000, but you're thinking about cheaping out and buying the $200,000
00:44:56.620 | car when you really want the $400,000 car, if he believes in his product, he's going
00:45:02.660 | to say you're going to be happier with the Rolls Royce and he's going to try his best
00:45:05.700 | to sell it to you in the very best way possible.
00:45:08.540 | And you, if you want the Rolls Royce, you should go for it because we don't live in
00:45:12.940 | a world in which money is limited.
00:45:14.740 | Money is literally unlimited.
00:45:17.540 | There's an unlimited amount of money that exists.
00:45:19.380 | There's an unlimited amount of money that's available to you.
00:45:21.540 | There is no limit whatsoever to the amount of wealth that we can create in the world
00:45:26.700 | and the amount of wealth that you can have in your life.
00:45:30.620 | And if you genuinely understand that, then it should transform your decisions.
00:45:35.340 | People who are parsimonious, they're losers, right?
00:45:42.580 | They don't win in the long run.
00:45:46.100 | And so what I've realized is I spent too much of my life being that guy who didn't believe
00:45:52.580 | in himself and believe in his own stuff and thus would pull back.
00:45:57.240 | And then because I knew I didn't believe in my own stuff and believe in what I was doing
00:46:00.860 | and believe in the value, I didn't sell it as aggressive as I should have, as I could
00:46:05.020 | have.
00:46:06.020 | And then because of that, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:46:09.740 | So I believe in honesty.
00:46:12.660 | If you don't have something worth spending money on, the solution to that is go out and
00:46:21.460 | develop something worth spending money on.
00:46:24.380 | Do the hard work.
00:46:25.780 | Do the study.
00:46:26.780 | Do the R&D.
00:46:27.780 | Do the development.
00:46:28.780 | Practice the engineering.
00:46:30.060 | But what you'll discover if you do that is that people want answers.
00:46:35.700 | I spend a lot of money on advice because I want answers.
00:46:39.860 | I have limited time and I want very fast results, which means that I need expertise.
00:46:45.380 | I need the answers.
00:46:47.300 | And every tentative step that I have taken in that direction in my life, it has always
00:46:51.420 | paid off.
00:46:54.700 | It has always paid off.
00:46:58.460 | Wish I could have snapped my fingers years ago and just automatically become that kind
00:47:03.420 | of person, that aggressive person.
00:47:06.140 | But I tell you, more and more I want to do it.
00:47:12.340 | And here's what happens.
00:47:15.180 | The people who can't afford something always ride on the coattails of those who can.
00:47:20.220 | In almost any industry, in almost any place, my free podcast does not pay me to create
00:47:27.140 | it.
00:47:28.140 | If I did this podcast for free, I probably would have welched on my bet to myself to
00:47:31.460 | do a thousand.
00:47:32.460 | I don't know.
00:47:33.820 | Maybe I would have had the confidence and self-determination to do it, but I probably
00:47:37.540 | would have welched.
00:47:40.180 | It's my high-paying clients who have provided me with the bandwidth to keep giving away
00:47:45.660 | the information for free.
00:47:48.180 | And in virtually every field it works like that.
00:47:50.500 | Right now, very wealthy men and women are pouring billions and billions of dollars into
00:47:58.780 | interesting areas of research, pouring billions and billions of dollars into space travel,
00:48:03.420 | pouring billions of dollars into anti-aging technologies.
00:48:07.500 | They're just pouring money into these spaces.
00:48:12.000 | And all the poor people are going to win because of it.
00:48:17.980 | They're going to be the benefactor or the beneficiary a decade from now of all of the
00:48:22.940 | money that Jeff Bezos is investing into anti-aging research.
00:48:27.580 | Because they're going to make the—at the curve, they're going to make the discoveries
00:48:31.620 | and you're going to get that information practically for free.
00:48:35.340 | So poor people, people who won't pay for stuff, always ride on the coattails of the rich people
00:48:40.540 | who will pay for stuff.
00:48:44.020 | So you should not be ashamed and embarrassed about selling something, about developing
00:48:49.540 | something.
00:48:52.540 | It's a poverty scarcity mindset that keeps you in that place.
00:48:56.780 | I wish I had a clearer way of resolving this show, but that is one of my biggest mistakes,
00:49:06.180 | is believing that progressive crap that somehow the accumulation of resources was a was a
00:49:13.860 | downside.
00:49:15.180 | And again, I don't mean to be offensive, but it is the fact, right?
00:49:19.420 | There are so many people who are super frugal, super money conscious, don't want to sell
00:49:24.620 | anything, don't like to be sold to.
00:49:26.660 | And what happens is there are leeches upon society.
00:49:29.140 | The money comes in, comes in, comes in.
00:49:30.660 | It gets piled up, piled up, piled up like that old miser and nothing ever happens because
00:49:34.860 | they haven't changed.
00:49:36.620 | And again, I've been there.
00:49:38.140 | I don't want that to be the case.
00:49:39.540 | I want to be someone who grows and who changes and who I want to be someone who changes the
00:49:44.060 | world.
00:49:46.060 | In order to do that, you got to sell, you got to have something worth selling, and then
00:49:50.260 | you got to sell it.
00:49:51.260 | Because if you're going to help someone, you're going to sell it.
00:49:53.060 | If you truly believe, and this was the thing about life insurance sales, it came to be
00:49:57.700 | convinced.
00:49:58.700 | All right, when I was before I became a life insurance agent, I read a book and I decided
00:50:04.180 | I was going to do it.
00:50:05.180 | And I read a book called How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.
00:50:08.860 | I forget the author now, but it's a classic kind of motivational book.
00:50:12.300 | And the author talked a lot about how he learned to do what was at that time called a one-call
00:50:17.540 | close, a one-call close.
00:50:20.620 | And at the time I was scared to do that because I thought this is going to be, this is going
00:50:24.140 | to, for me to do a one-call close, meaning one visit and tell the person, buy the insurance,
00:50:29.900 | then I'm going to have to be aggressive.
00:50:31.180 | And I'm not aggressive.
00:50:32.180 | I'm not confrontational.
00:50:33.180 | I don't, I don't push people to do that because after all, I don't make decisions quickly.
00:50:37.020 | After all, I think on it, right?
00:50:38.300 | I always take my time to make a good decision and think on it.
00:50:41.020 | I don't act impulsively with my money.
00:50:43.220 | And so how could I ask someone else to be, to act impulsively with their money?
00:50:47.460 | Right?
00:50:48.460 | How could I do that?
00:50:49.460 | And so I was scared of that.
00:50:50.460 | Well, I quickly found out in training, I was like, we don't, I don't do that anymore.
00:50:53.400 | That was, they did the one-call close and it was here, buy $5,000 of life insurance.
00:50:57.300 | Well, in the modern world, I don't, I never met an insurance agent who would ever sell
00:51:01.660 | someone life insurance on the first, on the first call.
00:51:04.580 | But what I came to realize is that with life insurance, like if you actually understand
00:51:10.660 | life insurance, there's literally, and when I say literally, I mean literally, there's
00:51:20.620 | literally no reason if you think you might want some life insurance at some point in
00:51:25.660 | the future, there's literally never a reason not to act now in the way that insurance law
00:51:29.980 | in the United States works.
00:51:31.220 | Right?
00:51:32.220 | All you do is you fill out an application, you give somebody their first month premium,
00:51:36.140 | you do your medical exam and you're insured on a conditional basis.
00:51:40.100 | And while it's very uncommon, obviously, that someone would die when their policy is an
00:51:44.740 | underwriting, it does happen.
00:51:47.600 | And there's literally no reason why a week later, you can't say, you know what?
00:51:51.380 | I don't want the insurance.
00:51:53.540 | There's no, there's no reason why the insurance agent can't bring you your insurance policy.
00:51:58.100 | And you usually have a two week free look period, 30 days sometimes where you can return
00:52:01.820 | the policy and get all your money back.
00:52:04.260 | And so I realized like if you actually care about people, you owe it to them to actually
00:52:09.620 | make them say like, do the application and give me money and at the very least get free
00:52:14.380 | insurance.
00:52:15.660 | It's not a sales gimmick.
00:52:16.660 | It's a matter of care.
00:52:17.980 | Right?
00:52:18.980 | If you genuinely believe that somebody, you're leaving a party and you genuinely believe
00:52:24.780 | that somebody is possibly endangering his life or the lives of others by driving drunk,
00:52:30.180 | you owe it to him to stop him.
00:52:33.980 | If you genuinely believe that somebody's actions are going to take him to hell, you owe it
00:52:38.180 | to him to preach the gospel.
00:52:40.420 | If you genuinely believe that somebody is doing something that's going to harm their
00:52:45.020 | family, you owe it to them to point it out to them.
00:52:48.020 | You owe somebody honesty.
00:52:49.660 | If you actually care about people, you owe them a duty of honesty.
00:52:55.060 | And honesty means that if you have something that you genuinely believe is good for somebody,
00:53:00.060 | then you had better sell it to them and tell them why they should buy it and do it aggressively
00:53:06.220 | so that they'll want to buy it.
00:53:11.180 | And then those who do, right?
00:53:13.900 | Stand behind your work.
00:53:16.740 | It's easy to offer a refund if somebody is dissatisfied.
00:53:19.100 | You're not going to please everybody, but you owe it to people to do it and to do it
00:53:22.420 | to your best of your ability.
00:53:26.660 | I wish I could have grasped that 15 years ago.
00:53:30.500 | I wish I could have grasped it.
00:53:32.980 | But I think I grasp it today.
00:53:36.940 | And 15 years hence, I predict it will transform my life and I want it to transform yours as
00:53:46.420 | well.
00:53:48.140 | Don't be a loser who doesn't believe in what you do and believe in what you sell.
00:53:52.960 | If you can't sell something with passion, get out, go somewhere else and find something
00:53:57.360 | you can sell with passion.
00:53:59.160 | But if you're creating something, if you're building something, sell with passion.
00:54:04.300 | Sell to people who need it, right?
00:54:05.420 | The classic thing that became very clear to me is that there was never a reason to be
00:54:10.820 | concerned about selling aggressively in the insurance world because the only mistake that
00:54:17.900 | you could make was not choosing the correct advice for somebody.
00:54:22.620 | And so this classic argument over buy term and invest the difference that I like to harp
00:54:28.300 | on, it was just a classic error of identification.
00:54:34.060 | Meaning the kind of person who is a good fit for term life insurance is fairly obvious.
00:54:39.060 | And the kind of person for whom a whole life insurance policy is a good fit is also fairly
00:54:43.460 | obvious.
00:54:44.820 | And you only have a problem when you mix those up.
00:54:47.580 | You only have a problem if you're sitting in front of somebody who makes $50,000 a year
00:54:50.980 | and has young kids and you're trying to tell them, "Oh, what you really need is $50,000
00:54:55.740 | a whole life insurance."
00:54:56.740 | Like, that's your problem, right?
00:54:58.380 | No, he doesn't need it.
00:54:59.420 | He needs $500,000 a term life insurance.
00:55:03.220 | But for the vast majority of people, and I think insurance agents, although they've never
00:55:06.340 | been able to prove it, right?
00:55:07.420 | People have horror stories, they've been treated badly.
00:55:09.460 | I know that stuff is out there.
00:55:11.380 | But at least in my experience, I think the vast majority of insurance agents always understood
00:55:15.140 | that.
00:55:16.140 | And I very rarely, in my work with any agents, I very rarely came across a situation in which
00:55:22.220 | they did the wrong thing.
00:55:25.660 | It's obvious.
00:55:26.660 | Now, there are, in a very small number of situations, times where you're like, "Well,
00:55:31.020 | you could go either way here."
00:55:33.100 | And in my experience, most of the people that I worked with in the financial industry pointed
00:55:36.140 | it out.
00:55:37.140 | They said, "This is what we do."
00:55:39.300 | And so a lot of it just comes down to identification.
00:55:44.160 | And so these conflicts that we think are conflicts are not a problem.
00:55:48.620 | You're not going to...
00:56:00.300 | Nobody's going to be...
00:56:01.300 | No $15 an hour worker is going to be pressured into buying a Rolls Royce.
00:56:05.300 | It's not going to happen.
00:56:08.180 | And while you might think, "Oh, that $15 an hour worker got pressured into buying the
00:56:11.980 | new Kia," and you might think it would have been smarter for them to go and buy a three-year-old
00:56:16.500 | Toyota, you can always look at it another way and just say, "Hey, make the best of what
00:56:21.180 | you've got."
00:56:22.180 | Right?
00:56:23.180 | New Kia with a seven-year powertrain warranty, whatever it used to be, 10-year powertrain
00:56:26.500 | warranty.
00:56:27.500 | Just drive the car and go about other things.
00:56:31.620 | You may sense kind of overloading with that same thing with frugality, but a lot of times
00:56:36.660 | I just discovered I've been wrong on a lot of stuff.
00:56:39.480 | And this is one of those things, right?
00:56:40.740 | The frugality, the trying to save money and whatnot, the opportunity cost of that has
00:56:45.660 | been high.
00:56:46.660 | But that, my friends, is a show for another day.
00:56:48.020 | Thank you for listening.
00:56:49.180 | And while I don't have anything to promote right here, stay tuned because I will be starting
00:56:54.380 | to promote some stuff pretty soon.
00:56:56.140 | Big changes afoot.
00:56:57.140 | Cheers.
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