Special Guest Gregg Rudolph

Count money man, money back riches.

I'm trying to told him, I'm a beast bug.

What's up gang? Welcome to the grind cast.

Simon Areas here. Get ready as a new day.

Alright, so we're going to be doing a quick recap to interview and ask Greg Rudolf,

one of our top RGA's, some questions on how he's transitioned so quickly from a completely different industry,

nothing to do with what we do.

It had some super success over the first 36 months.

So, you know, Greg, you've been a top producer internationally in your first couple months,

as far as sales goes.

This past year, over a million dollars in production and leadership.

You've made executive counsel this past year for our organization.

Three years in a row, I believe, internationally, one of the top recruiters,

top three recruiters internationally.

In our agency, fastest person in the history of our agency to receive an MGA contract,

which, you know, in the real world out there, I think it's like a general manager.

You know, you've did that, and I think, in less than four months from the time that you came in.

So, you know, the thing that's also exciting and most impressive is it's one thing to do it yourself.

It's another thing to start to do it through others and impact others.

And now you've gotten into a situation where you're promoting successful leaders, you know, people like Mark Bernstorf and Spencer,

and a bunch of other people just opened up offices in Dallas, got a presence in Florida.

So, what things, you know, in your three years so far, what things stand out to you on what has made you successful,

or maybe some of the key traits of people that make it versus people that don't make it in our business?

So, key traits of people that I've seen come in, you know, I've hired a lot of people in the past three years,

and a lot are still here, and a lot, it didn't make it.

It wasn't for them, and that's okay.

But the people that stick, the people that are successful here, they all have the same attributes.

You know, they are very disciplined people, number one.

They wake up early, they, you know, attack mind-body spirit.

They're just in tune with themselves. They all have goals. They're very goal-oriented.

All of them are very coachable. So, they can, you know, take coaching, which is, you know, obviously you know that, you know,

some people just can't take coaching. They don't know how to react to it. You know, you gotta kind of tone down your ego there.

But it's a lot easier to coach younger people, I feel, than someone at my age come in, and you have to be, you know, pretty ego-tistical.

Not to, you know, take advice from somebody that's younger than you or something, but you have to be a sponge, and you know,

that's what I learned, you know, taking advice from you, Justin, you know, I just absorb it all, you know,

and I'm actually older than you and Justin, you know, by a year.

So, you know, for me to take advice from you, you know, you have to, you know, tell it down.

Humbler yourself, exactly, and why wouldn't I in the first place? But you have to do stuff like that.

So, you know, very coachable people, humble people, they're all driven by, you know, money and success.

You know, a lot of people don't like to talk about money. I like to talk about it a lot because, you know, without money, you can't really help anybody.

You know, you can give someone some spiritual advice here and there, some relationship advice, but if you really want to impact someone, you know,

it takes money to do stuff like that. So, the more money you can make, the more people you can help.

Speaking of money, you know, one of the things that's unique, you know, in this industry, you know, to you is you came out of doing something,

car sales, running a car dealership that was already successful. You were making six figures, multiple six figures, 200,000 or so per year, transitioning in.

Most people at that point, you know, mid-30s, you know, making a couple hundred grand here, are not making that leap of faith.

If I tell people, you can't steal second base, which are foot on first base, but it sounds good, you know, but to really take your foot off of, you know, a couple hundred grand to go say,

all right, I'm going to do something, I'm going to do something a little bit different. What made you take a leap of faith so to speak to transition industries?

Well, you were probably the main reasoning behind that, you know that.

It was one of the hardest decisions I made in a long, long time, you know, my wife was pregnant at the time.

We're just starting our family, just got married, and you know, I'm coming, I was actually coming building my life back off of filing bankruptcy, because my business failed in my late 20s, had some personal issues with, you know, my daughter got sick,

and it was just the whole string of events that happened, and I had to close down my very successful business. So I'm climbing back up the ladder here, and I finally got back to making decent money, and I'm comfortable again, and I'm, you know, not stressing out about money, and then here this opportunity came about, and I'm like, oh man, you know, nothing's guaranteed.

There's no salary, there's no, you know, guaranteed weekly income. I just see a bunch of guys that, you know, have the same kind of attributes as me, the same goals, and you know, we didn't know each other from Adam.

At all.

That very simple energy.

Our very first time I should have your hand was outside of the capital group, we parked our car, we came up to each other, and it was that quick.

You know what I mean? Just the same energy, you know, real quick, you know, same size, same bill, same salary.

Yeah, I think you got half inch on your life, five or ten pounds, you know what I mean?

Not much.

Not much, not much.

That's why I'm trying to rock the boots, you know, but speaking of which, you know, I think coming out of, you know, other businesses, you know, the business that you owned, the car industry, you know, that you were in, and I've taken a liking over the years to your old mentor, Vex,

and have a lot of respect for him as a person, and what he did in that industry.

But, you know, residuals wasn't really a thing, you know, in car sales or anything, you know, you sell a car, and you're done, you've got to sell another car in order to get paid.

Which sticks out to you, you know, have you seen anything like that?

You know, where you do a job, and then you continue to get paid on it, you know, talk to me about the residuals.

You know, I've never seen anything like it, and I wish I understood it more earlier in my life, because I would have gotten into some type of industry with residual income.

So, you know, in real estate, in, you know, the car industry, in any industry, if you're a salesperson, you've got to keep selling to make money.

So, with residual income in our agency, you know, we're 100% invested in our clients and our business, so we get, you know, fully vested residuals, and they follow us for life.

So, you know, not every business is like that, especially in the life insurance industry, so we're very blessed to have that.

But, the policies that we sell, we get paid on for the rest of our lives, as long as the clients are still making their premium payment.

And most people pay on life insurance until when, until they die.

So, life insurance for a reason, right?

So, you know, you can literally walk away from this business after 10 years with six figures a year coming in.

And I don't know any other business that you can do that.

You know, there's people that work 30 years, and they have a $2,500 a month pension.

You know, some people don't even have pensions anymore because they're getting rid of them.

But, you know, people have to work for a lifetime to walk away with $3,000 a month.

No doubt.

I've been able to do that in two years.

One of the mentors in this, you know, Justin, you know, he's close to a quarter million a year in about 10 years.

In a decade, you've had young people that you've mentored, you know, getting a couple thousand a month.

You yourself is already over a few thousand hours a month, you know, every single month, like a lot of people here that have been here for just over a year, and they're $4,000 a month.

It's crazy. And there's some release money in there too.

But, I mean, they're talking 3, 4th like Mark, Spencer, all those guys and floors.

Speaking of young people, you know, you're coming up on 40.

You can't wait. Can I throw you a party?

I was just going to tell you.

Kendall, let me throw you a party.

I remember, you know, speaking of which, I remember my first day with Kendall.

And you know, Kendall was pissed. She was mad.

She didn't want the transition to happen. She was grilling.

And I understood it. And I understood, I told her, I said, you know, one day, one day you're going to like me. One day you're going to love me.

But I understood it. So hopefully, Kendall, if you're watching, hopefully we're in between that like love stage.

And so proud to watch you grow your family and play a small part. You guys are really doing something special.

But the young people, the young folks, we have a young culture, which is why I think even as we age, we still fit in with the culture because I ain't trying to get old.

I think old is a mindset. You know, we like to stay around youthful people, youthful thinking people.

In your aspect, why do you think from what you've seen? Because you know, I think right now you have some of the highest producing young people, 20-year-old, 21-year-olds.

Very common to see 20-year-olds in your organization making 20, 30,000 hours in a month, you know, like Spencer in the gang.

What things do you see that make? Why are young people so successful? You don't see young people, 2019-21, making it like this everywhere.

Pretty much nowhere. What do you think it is about the young people that makes it a fit or why are these young people able to have so much success?

I personally feel like it's easier now to recruit younger people and get them started just because of social media and the whole world right now is at your fingertips.

And there's so much motivation, so much that you can look at. These kids are on Instagram every day looking at young people making millions and all these nice cars and Lamborghinis and Ferrari's and this lifestyle.

So that's what they want. So they're highly motivated but when they get in here, they're raw. They've never had a sales position before and I like that because that means they don't have any bad habits.

So you can mold them into the salesperson that they want to be and we have, God, I've got 20 years. Let's just take Spencer for example because we're talking about him.

This kid just turned 21 yesterday and he's making between anywhere from 4 to $10,000 a week religiously and that's consistently.

Yeah, this is consistently. This is someone that came in, moved down to Florida six months ago, no money at all, nothing, not a pot to piss in.

He's got over 50 grand saved up already this year, showed me his bank statement. I'm like, let's go for it.

He's got a lot of brand new Mercedes and he's in leadership now so he's starting to mentor other people, bring his people in and now his people are making that type of money too.

Not only the money and the young people that you can develop but if we were to call him right now and say, hey, what'd you do today? He probably read a book, probably read some scripture, probably exercise.

It's developing the whole person. Speaking of a young culture, young people, young atmosphere, even brought up Lamborghinis and stuff like that, we have a contest going on right now.

We're going to give away a Lamborghini in the next 60 days. Very unique, almost different to the point of, if I'm looking from the outside in and I'm not in it, they're like, what are these guys doing?

They play a little bit of music, they wear flashy stuff, sometimes, how would you describe our culture here in atmosphere here and what that's like?

That was one of the main reasons why I'm here and I stayed with this company. A lot of people in the insurance industry bounce around.

We see it firsthand. People promise you things and you go in there and it's not what they seem, not what they say. But culture has a lot to do with retaining your agents, retaining your people.

If they can have fun and they have the ability to grow and experience what we experience, it's so much easier to keep them. They're so much happier.

I just had someone message me this morning on Facebook and they saw, they said, they're an insurance broker in North Carolina.

And he said, wow, are you guys really giving away a Lamborghini? He said, we're having a March, Manus Tournament here but the grand prize is 500 bucks. I feel a little overdone.

I was like, well, this is something we build up and as we've been in business, what, 13, 14 years now you've been doing this. So it's not like we're giving away a Lamborghini.

13 in March couple of days. That's a long time. Walked in with three people and my mother.

Now look at you over. I think we got over 450 agents now. 25 offices, 12 different, 13 different states. I keep losing track.

Definitely got better since I met the lumberjack. And I'm appreciative and grateful to have you on board with us, man. And one of the captains of the ship.

I think maybe wrap it up to wrap it up. Maybe talk a little bit real quick about the, we mentioned the atmosphere, the culture. I can remember inviting Vic down. I'm like, I want you to see him.

I'm checking this out. It looks crazy. You know what I mean? But the whole mindset of the Greg was just to be only experience I really had, you know, coming into this business was two things.

One I won't talk about. One I will, which was athletics and sports playing college football and stuff. I wanted the vision was to create a locker room, you know, a team atmosphere where you have that type of environment, like a weight room or, you know, a field people walking on in the field to go to battle together and creating that family atmosphere culture.

We really had the opportunity this year to see the stability of the organization, you know, going going from going from, you know, I remember people telling me when I first started, oh, this is depression recession proof.

2008, I was here actually when I just started here in Pittsburgh and I watched the recession happen. I remember the president getting on the TV and I just opened up an office and I see him saying this is the worst economic time since the Great Depression.

I'm like, great time. And you really know how to time it up, you know, and we grew. And now something that we never

thought what happened happens.

You know, even my grandmother's, you know, she's mid 80.

She's, she never seen anything like the coronavirus

and people getting shut down and wearing a mask

and all this other stuff.

And we have exploded through the roof, you know,

through the stability, which is important when you're,

you know, after I started to have fun here

and really see what it can do.

I'm like, man, can I raise a family on this?

Is this, is this a here today?

We're having fun gone tomorrow, you know,

a couple of years or can we have children?

Can we support a wife?

Can we do things like that?

Maybe to wrap it up, talk about what you've seen

in the stability of the organization.

Yeah, it, from, from an outsider looking in,

you really gotta say to yourself, is this real?

Are these people really doing this?

Is this, is this just a show?

Is it's a front?

But you know, I've been here for all going on four years now

and everything you've ever told me we've, we've exceeded,

you know, we've done more than we said we were gonna do.

Try to always under promise and over deliver.

I use that line every day, every week in my overviews, you know,

so it's, it's a special place

and the greatest part about it is you can grow yourself,

you know, it's not like you can come in here and it's stagnant.

You know, COVID-19 was really a blessing

in disguise to us because we created a virtual sales assistant

where now we're calling people from different states

in different states and doing presentations

over the computer.

We're seeing three times the amount of people we really would

in a week because we don't have to drive them anymore.

It's convenient.

We are not wasting time on, you know, driving, traffic, gas,

you know, so it, it's amazing.

And God bless, you know, globe life and, and AIL

for taking the bull by the horns and, and coming up

with that strategy, you know, we're blessed to be a fortune

500 company, you know, we're blessed to have, you know,

Steve and Dave, you know, that got our backs and,

in the home office and everybody there.

I mean, I wouldn't change this for the world

what I got going on here and it was a very hard decision.

And if you remember, we, we pretty much dated

for six months before I made the decision to come here.

Yeah.

But I, I took everything that you told me in, in, in my head

and I looked in your eyes and I trusted you.

And I, and here we are, you know, we're, we're thriving

and we're, you know, taking over the industry really.

And it's, it's been fun and it's been a great ride.

Best of you to come.

I can't wait.

Open up the year with four, four brand new offices, man.

So thanks for, thanks for believing in us.

And it was, it was good to hear.

We didn't practice, you know, this, there we didn't have.

No, we just kind of said, let's, let's do it.

So good to hear through and see it through your eyes

as someone that's, you know, to me is, is still new,

you know, a couple, that's what's scary for how well you've

done, you know, three years in the game, man.

So congratulations and congratulations to you

in advance for all the future success in life.

You're going to continue to impact.

Let's get it.

Count money, man.

Money back riches.

I tried to told, I was trying to told, I'm a beast, but.