Special Guest: Steve Greer

Count money, man.

My stack riches.

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

But what's up gang?

Welcome to the grind cast.

Stop it.

There is here.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

What's up gang?

Welcome to another episode of the grind cast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

And we have a special guest, special treat in the house.

My friend, our CEO of our insurance company, Steve Greer.

And we were just talking when I was coming up on who's the star to show.

And it's cool that I'm probably last place.

And I'm probably third best star here in this probably.

Greer's number one, perms number two, usually number one.

And I'm last.

So we're excited to hear from Mr. Steve Greer, our friend who's at the corporate home office

of our company for those of you that don't know it's based in Dallas, actually McKinney,

Texas.

And Greer is at the helm running the show.

So Steve, maybe can you open up and start telling us a little bit about how you found

AIO and in this company?

Your story never gets old to me.

It's so inspiring.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background upbringing and how you transitioned

here?

Sure.

First off, let me say until I get my own mug like perms, I feel like I'm not a star.

So I got to work on a Greer swag.

You know what I mean?

You got to, you can shirt sweatshirts hats, but that mug is on another level.

And let me just start by saying, man, I'm super excited to be here today.

Just to hang out with you guys and talk to you for a few moments.

And hopefully, we can share something that maybe would inspire somebody to hang in there

a little longer or maybe somebody to take the step, another step in their career.

And I think what you'll find out from talking today is that this definitely isn't a perfect

story.

Not a perfect guy, a few ups and downs, but I'll take you back early, early.

Just a little bit of upbringing.

And the reason why I want to do that is I think if I don't potentially some of the things

I say to come out the wrong way, and if you sort of know where I came from, then I think

it'll all come together and make a little more sense.

No sooner than I was born, my parents were divorced.

So I started out with a single mom and she got remarried and that didn't work out.

And we were kind of plugging along.

I was living in Louisville, Kentucky, sort of in her city, the Hazelwood area.

There's housing projects there.

We lived in the housing projects.

Then we upgraded and moved right on the edge of the housing projects.

But it's kind of like a group effort.

My cousin, Dorian and Dorian, you guys might have heard of there with American income as

well.

They lived right there.

And so a lot of the time I lived with them and both of our moms worked.

So when one mom was working, the other one was babysitting and back and forth.

We kind of went around the time I was, I think about nine, my mom got married for the

third time.

And let me stop and say, because I think this is important, even though my mom and dad,

my biological mother and father got divorced when I was born.

I was still fortunate to have a dad that was at least get me every weekend and stay involved

on some level.

And for all the guys out there who have kids and sometimes the relationship doesn't work

out, I would encourage you to do the best you can to be a father to that child.

So anyway, my mom got married for the third time.

This time, she hit gold.

My stepdad was a great guy.

He brought to me foundationally through his example was the spiritual side of things.

He was a guy that would get up every day and read his Bible.

He did some small time preaching on the side at nursing homes and I would go with him as

a little kid and go to nursing homes.

He was a maintenance man.

He never made a lot of money.

When him and my mom got married, he had two kids.

She had two kids.

And then they had another one.

So I was one of five all of a sudden.

And I'll never forget.

He was making six dollars an hour which back then I mean, that was a decent wage because

minimum wage was like not a whole lot.

But with five kids, it just wasn't enough.

And so my mom also cleaned houses, both residential houses and some new construction kind of

get those houses ready for somebody to move into.

So when I was 12 years old, I started working with her cleaning some houses to make some extra

money.

And then when I was 14, I got my first commission job.

And I was super excited about my commission job.

I got paid a quarter of a case.

I went to work for a buddy of mine.

His mom worked at the Lackling Commissary.

We had moved to San Antonio, Texas.

And I was stocking groceries for a quarter of a case.

And I was super excited to do that because I could make enough money to buy lunch at school.

I could make enough money to buy shoes.

And to me, this was all a big deal because just briefly stepping back just a short time

before that, we got free lunch at school.

We got stood in line and got free government cheese.

I was raised on government cheese.

Which I was excited about when I was with you.

You know, you were there a time when the year came around.

I loved it.

Yeah.

No, it's funny when I talk about that, it makes my mouth water part.

You know, just think about it.

For those of you that haven't had that opportunity.

But anyway, the one thing I do remember was, you know, my mom and my stepdad, when you'd

say, hey, I want some shoes or hey, I want this or that.

The answer to everything was always, you know, we don't have the money.

We don't have the money.

We don't have the money.

Mom, I need a pair of jeans.

We don't have the money.

I need shoes.

We don't have the money.

Mom, what's the weather going to be out today?

We don't have the money.

You know, it was just that was just a standard answer for everything.

And I remember as a young man thinking, you know, man, I don't want to live like this.

You know, I don't want to, I don't want to live where every, like literally, it's funny

because I think a lot of people think rich people think about money a lot.

Be quite honest with you.

We were thinking a whole lot more about money when we didn't have money.

When we did have some, you know, so I remember my dad me saying to him, you know, man, I want

a better life.

I want a better things.

And he said, well, Steve, you know, the reason why nobody in our family makes really

good money is nobody went to college.

And if you, if you want to make good money in all the good jobs, you know, good job, kind

of an oxymoron, but if you want to make good money and have a good job, you got to go

to school and get an education.

And I'm sure there are many people on here today.

Their parents told them the same thing.

So I went to school, went to Western Kentucky University, got a finance and accounting degree,

came out of college, couldn't find a job.

I do like many of the kids today, was frustrated.

I was ambitious, but I was frustrated and I was looking for an opportunity.

And I was fortunate.

I ended up getting a lead from my wife, Dana, from her mom was working for GE and General

Electric.

And so I got an interview with General Electric, went to work for them.

So for the next five years, I was a, I was a mover and a shaker.

And if there's a little nugget that I can tell any of those recent college graduates,

so I graduated college, I was, you know, 22 years old, 22, 23.

By the time I was 25, two years later, I had read over 100 self-development or leadership

books in a two year period of time.

Why I bring that up is because no matter where you're at in the workplace, wherever you're

at in life, you can stand out.

And what you're putting in your mind is what's going to come out.

And at GE, they were like this kid is saying stuff and doing stuff.

I was reading the magic of thinking big and thinking real rich and, you know, cubbies,

seven habits of highly picky.

I was just consuming all of this not book stuff, but life stuff.

Yeah.

Things that I could go in the office and apply tomorrow.

And it was like blowing people's minds.

And so it's crazy when you said that is, is you read 100 books in your first two years.

You know, they, I saw somewhere that they say that the average CEO in America reads 50

books a year.

Wow.

So is that what started the path, I wonder, you know what I mean?

Because there's, there's, there's stats out there wherever they pull this from that

I've read that says the average CEO reads 50 books a year.

That's an average of 50 books a year.

Anyway.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

You know what's funny?

And we all read these things and you, you hear these things and see jobs.

One of one of his quotes that I love was, you can never connect the dots looking forward.

You can only connect the dots looking back.

And here's what's funny Simon.

I want you to imagine this.

Imagine Steve Greer.

I was 17 years old.

I graduated from high school.

I'm signing up for classes, my freshman year of college.

And my dad says, okay, so what kind of classes do you want to take?

And I was, I don't know.

You know, he's like, well, what do you want to do?

And I said, well, I really like the outdoors, you know, like I like fishing and I like the

outdoors.

I was thinking maybe like a park rager.

I was looking down at the list.

I was looking down at the foot.

And I said, what do you think of that?

That he said, no, you know, like he goes, no, he goes, what you do is you, you, you get

a good job and then you get to enjoy your time off.

You make money, get a good job, make some money and then you get to enjoy your time off.

And so here's this is one when, when, when people talk about writing down goals and, and

how your mind works, my dad grabs a magazine and puts it in front of me.

And it's a Forbes magazine and the magazine said on the cover, 80% of American CEOs have

a finance degree.

My dad said, how does CEO sound?

I said, what's that?

You know, it remains he goes, that's the guy that runs the place.

I said, oh yeah, I like running stuff.

He goes, all right, we're going to sign you up for a finance degree.

That's literally like all the, all the people that are listening to the day that just knew

what they wanted to be when they grew up.

I wasn't that guy.

I was lost.

You know what I mean?

I was just going, I don't know, I want to make some money.

I don't know what I want to do.

You know, I really had no clue.

So, you know, after five years at GE, what I'll tell you is the corporate structure can hold

back a person because it doesn't move to the speed of the, of many of the people that

we're talking to today in American income.

And in other places where you control your own destiny, it can be very frustrating if

you're in a structure where just because somebody got there before you or has already been

there for 10 years and you're basically waiting for somebody to retire, get fired or die

to get promoted.

And that was a very frustrating thing for me as a young man because I really felt like

at 25, 27, like I should be, I wanted more responsibility.

And I wanted, you know, to make a bigger difference.

And it wasn't happening fast enough, which got me lucky.

And many times in life, you're looking for lookers.

You know, a lot of times we meet people and talk to people, they're stone-coed dead.

And then there's other people that you talk to that they are looking for an opportunity

in life.

They're driving around, praying for it.

And then all of a sudden they run into you and you could be that answer to prayer.

And so, you know, when you're talking to people and they have nothing and nothing here,

you know, be a nice guy and move on down the road.

But there's a lot of people out there that are looking to get ahead and you're looking

to surround yourself with those kind of people in life.

What made you go from that?

You said you were there five years with GE.

So then did you transition right out into AIL?

Yeah, I did.

And what was the setup from that?

I know Duran.

I know your cousin.

I remember the story, but a lot of the listeners don't.

Sure.

For being a park ranger.

Go ahead, Perm.

No, before being a park ranger, we wanted to be a park ranger.

Yeah.

Yeah, I never got to do that, Perm.

So I was looking and I was always like trying to keep my eye on things and looking for opportunities

and looking for a way.

And I happened to understand from working at GE and doing some of the books.

You know, I was the finance and accounting guy.

I was looking Simon and I saw, I got to see all the payroll.

And I noticed that all the people in sales were making all the money.

And so I went to human resources and said, hey, I want to get into sales.

And they said, oh, you can't get into sales.

You're in the accounting department.

They don't get into sales.

And so I quit.

I literally say it ain't for me.

I knew I was like, I got to get into sales somehow.

So I'm looking for sales job.

I'm interviewing in Austin, Texas with a friend.

I'm putting my fillers out.

Duran heard and he called me and said, hey, we need to get together and meet.

So, you know, he did, you know, how you do these fancy when you're wine and dine, somebody

you take them out.

It's a really nice restaurant.

So at the time, we were in Kentucky.

So he took me to Crocketer Barrel.

So he said, yeah, that's me.

That's me to Crocketer Barrel.

It's good.

Close, close this deal.

And anyway, we meet at Crocketer Barrel.

And he starts painting this vision of American income and how it worked and I didn't really

have to be honest.

I didn't really understand everything, you know, but I had faith.

And like he was talking about renewals and I was like wow, I remember he said, he said

to Steve, it's like Elvis Presley income.

I said, Elvis Presley income, what do you mean?

He said, it was like, were you cut the record one time?

But even after you're dead, every time the song plays, you get paid.

I was like, my eyes were this big.

I mean, I was like, yes.

And you know, there's a little nugget in there because Simon, he was talking about,

you know, leadership bonuses and how when your people do better, you do better.

And what clicked and it was from like reading a lot of books.

And I'd already heard this concept, but Jerome putting it together, what most wealthy people

are not doing is trading hours for dollars.

They have a way to multiply their time and effort.

So you've only got 168 hours in a week, right?

You got to sleep some time unless you're Simon.

And you can't.

I'll be getting eight hours.

Do you get it in here?

Yeah, good for you.

Well, that means you must go to bed at 6 p.m.

Because I know how I really get up.

9 to 5.

9 to 5.

I love it.

I love it.

But, you know, he was explaining this concept where you could duplicate yourself, the residual

income.

And I could see like, wait a minute, I'm looking for an opportunity you're talking about,

no upfront investment, you know, essentially none.

Get a license.

You know, it's not going to cut no barrier to entry, no franchise fees, no, you know,

all this kind of stuff.

And then he told me, and this is like, where the bell went off, he's like, and if you

do really well, then there's an opportunity for you to have your own agency.

I'm like, what?

Like, you could actually have your own business.

He's like, yeah, it's kind of similar to like franchising is what he was trying to explain

to me at the time.

And I was just, I was like, wow, I've never, I've never, now after he got me really, really

excited, we're in the parking lot.

He said, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention, you know, we're going to open up this office

and Rochester.

And I'm like, well, that's funny.

I've never heard of Rochester Kentucky.

He's like, oh, no Rochester, New York.

I was like, oh, he goes, hey, you wanted to get in sales, right?

I said, yeah, this is DeRon Simon.

I said, yeah, man, I told you, I want to be in sales.

He goes, well, your first sales with Dana, good luck.

True, right?

That's always the first sale.

Yeah.

And so I thought, on the way home, I thought about that.

And I said, you know what?

I'm going to learn something from DeRon on day one.

I went home and did the same thing.

I talked for 45 minutes about how rich we were going to be and how excited this is going

to be and how she wouldn't have to work anymore.

And at the time, we had a vision to get her home with the kids.

We had three very small children.

And you know, sometimes you have to leave something good to get something great.

Amen.

And then we had a good, a good, good job.

Benefits, health insurance, all the little trappings.

And it moved 700 miles to Rochester to York.

Our family thought we were absolutely not my mother-in-law said, nobody quits GE.

You come here, you work 30 years, you have this great pension and retirement and all this

kind of stuff.

Literally, there were some upset people.

You know, when you got three babies, basically, you know, they fed you.

They felt like it was irresponsible.

You know what I was thinking is, well, you know, always get another job.

Right.

Right.

How often do opportunities like this come along and you know, burn some bridges, baby,

and went for it?

You know, I think, you know, in the thing that always sticks out to me about, you know,

your story is, it's easy to look at where you're at right now and to see you happily married.

I know over 20 years, you know, you've been married to Dana.

You have three beautiful children.

Six, you know, we were just talking about Bailey just made the honor roll.

I mean, just they see all the corporate jets, private jets, CEO, all this.

But what they don't see is the stories of Dana with the three kids and you're out working

and she's cleaning things, cleaning places.

And you talk about that startup phase because if people miss that part of your journey,

and then I think they miss the motivation or inspiration to do wherever they are currently

right now, the things that stand out to me is number one, you see, he gave up good for

great.

Most of the time people, there's trade-offs.

You have to gain anything.

You always got to give up something.

And I think the reason why people don't gain as much as they could is because the giving

up of things is usually what scares people.

And then it comes then the sacrifice.

People like the outcome, if we could tell them, hey, here's what you're going to get.

You're going to get private jets.

You're going to make plenty of money.

You're going to be married with three kids.

All of them successful.

All of them did great in college and being great weather.

That's great.

You want that job?

Yeah.

How about wife, three young kids move from home and I'm working some nights and stuff?

So why don't you talk about that part of the journey that without that journey you wouldn't

be here today?

Let me do that.

I'm glad you brought that up because I know there's a lot of people probably that are listening

today that they got white, they got kids.

You got to miss some T-ball games and some dance recitals and things like that.

But what happened was when I made a decision, we made a decision, I immediately moved to

Rochester, New York and started selling.

And what we needed to do is we had a home so we had to sell our house.

So in order to sell a house, you kind of got to keep it cleaned up in the yard cut, everything

in order.

So the plan was, let's put the house on a market and Dana's going to be up here in

a month or two.

That's how I do it.

I mean, literally, we hadn't even packed.

That's how I was like, boom, let's go.

I ain't waiting around.

Let's get started.

Dana was also working part-time cleaning homes.

So what she did was she had two friends that had kids as well.

So on one day, Dana went clean houses.

And on the next day, she would babysit another girl's kids.

And then on the next day, Dana went clean houses.

And the third girl would babysit.

So they had this little rotation that was going on.

You know, a lot of times, and here's part of the story, no sooner than I moved to New

York September 11th happens.

Probably one of the most devastating times in our country's history.

The housing market stops, the world stops.

It's almost like the pandemic we're going through right now where there are moments in

time where big things happen.

September 11th shook this country to its core.

It scared us really bad, you know, as a nation.

What happened was a housing market stop.

So for 10 months, Dana was stuck in Louisville while I was in New York selling.

And so not only did you have the entire situation of what was going on trying to get started

in a new business, but my wife and three kids are in another state.

And I tell people, you know, I know you've got to miss the dancer's side.

And a T-baw game.

I miss the first, or this part was three months old.

I miss the first next nine months of his life.

Like you can take, you could take the year first year of his life and remember holding

up baby Simon, just erase that because I don't have that.

And it ain't no big deal.

That's the funny thing about me.

They don't remember.

Right.

You know, and turn my ass to kids.

I told them I said, I'm sorry I missed this and I'm sorry I missed that because there

was a lot of missing those things.

You know, when they were growing up and I told them I'm sorry and I sat them down and

had a real serious talk with them.

And you know what they told me, Perm?

What did they tell you?

They said, that's okay, Dad.

We like being rich.

Yeah.

I bet that's what they told you.

It's all right, Dad.

No worries.

I love the richness.

We'll take it right away.

We'll take it, Dad.

Yeah.

In fact, they told me they said, we'll let you make it up to us for the rest of our life.

Truth, man.

Truth.

Now, another thing that stands out to me in your journey was, you know, when you, when

you talked about the adversity and obstacle where, you know, sometimes, you know, there's

a quote out there says, adversity causes some men to break and it causes others to break

records.

And, you know, you talked about, you know, at one point, one point of your career, you

had some retention issues pop up.

And, you know, the business went down and agents were leaving and you kind of were forced

after years of being in the game to get back out there and start training people yourself

and selling again yourself.

How many years were you in the game where you had to come back out there and make a choice

either I'm going to fail and step backwards or I'm going to grind forwards and make

the rest the best.

So boy, that brings back bad memories.

Bad memories aren't always so fun to talk about, you learned so much from them.

So I had, I was with the company for two years, about two and a half years became an SGA.

And everybody out there, when they look at an SGA, they think, man, that's the best job

in the world.

You got to be.

You just tell everybody what to do and that just happens, you know, until you've been in

no shoes, you don't understand the level of responsibility and it is not as easy as it

looks.

And I know, hopefully there's some SGA's that are listening to your thing today and I know

these guys know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's sort of like being a CEO too, you know, saying the same deal.

But anyway, I was poking along two and a half years with the company.

I became an SGA.

Pretty quick, it's pretty young man had turned barely 30 years old.

I started when I was 28.

Here I am 30 and I'm doing my deals in SGA.

Things start to go pretty well.

The one gift I had was I was good at personal recruiting.

So I brought in five good friends of mine and we started to build a great agency in Houston.

Then all of a sudden, we went through this quality issue, this retention of business issue

that Simon's talking about.

And it's funny because, you know, people just start jumping off the ship.

They panic.

All of a sudden when, you know, they have challenges with quality and they're not getting

bonuses and they're not getting advanced things start to go.

And here's a critical point to this story.

I had done so well at this time.

I was one of the youngest members on the executive council.

So back in the day, Simon, only the old dogs were on the executive.

Now guys have been around 20, 30 years, you know, these type of people.

And here I was as young gun 2005.

That was on the executive council and I was super excited to be there.

And all of a sudden my retention is tanking.

My agencies falling apart at the time just to put you in some perspective.

Jim and Simon weren't partners yet.

And Marcus, me and Jim were in the same category.

Marcus, Jim and Marcus.

What did I say?

Jim and Simon.

Sorry.

That's all right.

My bad.

Yeah.

My bad.

My Marcus's PR guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, you're a great product of Marcus's leadership.

So Jim and Marcus hadn't partnered yet.

In fact, me and Jim were in the same category.

That's how long ago this was.

You know, we were out battling it out in the category.

But the business fell apart and, you know, this happens a lot in life.

This happens in marriage.

This happens in business.

This happens in all kinds of stuff where.

Where's that day where you have that moment and you're thinking to yourself, you know,

what do I, what do I do here?

And Simon, you had mentioned several years back I had this talk about the five stages

agreed.

And there's that first moment is sort of that denial moment.

You know, the main way is like, now the same happened and everything's going to be fine.

You know, that type of deal.

The next moment is the angry moment.

This is where you start blaming everything on the company.

You blame it on perm, you blame it on your MGA.

It's got to be everybody's fault.

But mine.

And then you start the next phase is bargaining.

This is where you start thinking, man, if I could pull this off, maybe if I partnered with

this guy, it would get me out of here.

Or maybe if I did it, you know, maybe if I just got a loan from the banker, from the

company, maybe.

Maybe this, you know, this would help, right?

And then that next phase is depression.

This is where you're just, I mean, it's a dark, lonely place.

And I know probably everybody's been there at one moment.

You won't allow anybody in even though they're on the outside trying to get in.

And you are filling this ton of weight on your chest of the responsibility and how you've

let people down and you've let your family down.

And how my mother-in-law was right.

I should have never left my job at G.

All this is right is there.

But what the winners do is they find that last level, which is acceptance.

And that's that part where you realize, hey, this is my circus and these are my monkeys.

And if it's going to be, it's up to me, I've got to dig in.

And Simon, I have to tell you, and I think you could appreciate this more than anybody

because you've had a tremendous amount of success.

I mean, tremendous in the history of American income life.

You, I mean, boom, right up there, right up there with the two or three all-time great

assignments been there.

But when you're at the peak of what you think is good,

But in all the sudden, if you thought, okay, to make this thing work, I'm going to have

to get back out there and start all over.

I'm going to have to do a little selling.

I'm going to have to train a few new guys because you don't have a choice.

And I got to tell you, man, I was so blessed to get some great advice because when I was

in that depression piece of the stage, if you will, my wife told me something that literally

changed the direction of my life because if you make the wrong decision when it's down

and out and you're going to have this happen multiple times, literally you change.

That's a fork in the road for your life.

You're probably going to end up in a different spot.

And at that moment in time, you start to think about plan B. You know what I mean, everybody

has got the plan B.

And so I'll start to think, well, maybe what I do is, I ain't leaving the company.

I knew that.

I was like, there ain't no better opportunity.

I was a top MGA in the company.

I'm thinking, you know what?

Maybe I'll go be an MGA for a while.

Lick my wounds, get healed up and maybe take another stab at this SGA thing down the road.

Yeah, like I'm in Dana said, like just quote unquote, man, just burned on my brain forever.

She said, why would you be an MGA for somebody else when you can be an MGA for the Steve

and your agency?

And literally it hit me in what she was saying in his look.

You've got to do what you've got to do.

Why wouldn't you just go to work, Steve?

And the Simon Knows and even MGA's that are listening to today, I know they know,

because nobody, like once you get out of the field, it's hard to get back into the field.

It's heavy.

Like if you're there, stay there.

Stay there until Simon tells you, okay, you can come on.

Come on, come on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's tough when you get out.

And if you can imagine being an SGA, it's like Perm getting out of the Bentley.

It's tough for him to get out.

Come on, we can do this.

He's got the car seat in the back.

So we got to help him out.

When I sit in the seat after he drives, I got to brace myself.

It was like it's a long, go down.

It's a long way.

Sorry.

Sorry about that.

I love it.

It's guy.

No.

Well, that was it for me.

I mean, you know, the acceptance.

Now you're the CEO.

So, you know, what I've been, I haven't asked you this one.

Yeah.

But, and I'd like to smoke a cigar with you in that room there.

I was in that cigar room at your house that you're sitting in there when it was being

built.

Yeah.

And I can't wait to get over to it with you.

But what are maybe one or two things that is harder than you expect it as being the

CEO?

And on the flip side, maybe one or two things that you think has been cooler or easier than

you expect it being the CEO.

So, you know, one of the hard thing I'd say for me, one of the hard things is you never

understand the magnitude of the weight and the responsibility.

I have to tell you, for many years, I sat and looked at the previous CEO, Roger Smith.

And you always naturally make judgments about decisions that your leader makes, whether

you agree with him or don't agree with him.

And it's just a natural thing that we all do.

And until you walk a mile in that man's shoes, you know what I mean?

You can't appreciate it.

And so, you know, what I realized and what I would tell you, the hard part for me was,

you've got a company now that we have around 9,000 agents and about 1,000 people at our

home office in Waco.

So, we got about 10,000 families, 10,000 people that are counting on you to make.

The right decision and the magnitude of that, unless you try it on, you know, you could

relate it to watching guys on the field at the NFL because you played in high school in

college thinking, dude, I would get out there.

You don't understand the speed of the game until you're on the field with that level of

an athlete.

And at this level, you know, that was really hard to figure out.

And the other thing Simon, you know that our company is filled with great leaders.

And so, when you're trying to lead, think about this, trying to lead people who've been

here twice at the time that you've been here and done four times as much, ten times as

much.

There's a lot of finesse and trusting God that you've got to do.

The other thing on the challenging part to me is really understanding the life of an

organization and how the vision of the organization has to be driven by the purpose.

And so, you know, like, look, when you first get started in American income, you're just

wanting to win a contest and you're trying to get the gas card and you're trying to win

the Maasarati in the Raffle or whatever's going on.

And then all of a sudden, somebody dies and you're involved in a claim and you realize

every hair on your neck stands up and you get goose bumps all over your body and you're

like, I didn't realize, like we're really here selling life insurance, man.

People are really dying and you know, many things are really happening.

You understand the reality of the business and how early on you just think it's about,

you know, the hustle and the grind and the money and the fun and just trying to beat your

buddy and trying to be the top dog in the office and all of a sudden you realize, man,

there's a purpose in this business is so much greater than just, you know, some of the

financial things that rewards that we get from it.

Man, we're out making a difference.

We're impacting people's lives.

Right now, American income life is protecting 45,000 new families every single month.

And I'm proud of that.

Right?

Because nobody thinks about it.

Everybody just puts it in the drawer and forgets about it.

But all of a sudden, one day you become the most important person in somebody's life.

And when you look at the number of claims that we pay out, it just blows my mind, the reality

of our business.

And so I take that very, very seriously, you know, the purpose, if you really believe in

the passion and the purpose of the company, it's what gives you the momentum to overcome

the obstacles that are going to come in business and they are going to come.

Right?

We're in the middle of a pandemic, right?

Obstacles, you know, I mean, it's been, it's been amazing.

It's been amazing to see how we have adapted as a company all the way down to the agency levels

to going virtual with COVID-19.

I mean, it just changed the game completely for all of us.

If somebody would have told me 90 days ago, hey, you're not going to be able to go see

anyone in person for the rest of the year, okay?

Crazy.

I would have been like on my knees somewhere telling Natalie, we might need to look, I don't

know how I'm going to, how are we going to do this?

And man, within a few weeks, not only did we do it at the corporate level, making it

all possible, those quick adjustments on the fly to be able to make it possible, but

are people to go out there and actually do a better job?

You know, I know we broke our all-time record, our agency during COVID-19.

We plan on breaking that record currently right now this month of July and we're not, we're

not in most of our territories, we're not able to see anybody, you know, in person.

So thank you, you know, for what you did and what the people at the company did behind

the scenes to make that happen.

What has it been like for you?

You know, I know I had the opportunity to sit front row when you brought in Jerry Jones

to speak, you know, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys.

I mean, it's one of the most storied, most popular, I mean, they call it America's team,

America's team.

So here I am sitting front row because of what we've done, you know, with our company to

listen to Jerry Jones, and then, you know, I know it used to be Gene Upshaw, but on our

labor advisory board now is Dee Maurice Smith, who is the NFL players union president and all

that stuff.

But could you tell us a little bit about, you know, what has, you know, your experience

with Jerry Jones been like and that whole us being the official life insurance company

to Dallas Cowboys.

What's that, what's that been like?

Yeah, let me do that.

Let me take one quick step back and I want to say this.

I want to say, because I've had a lot of people say, hey, Steve with the virtual transition

man, you did such a good job of this, that and the other, let me just like break a little

myth.

One thing that I will tell you from being in this business for a long time is all the

great ideas, all the great ideas come from the field.

And I want to give the field a lot of credit because there were some S.C.A.'s that reached

out and started talking about how we could do our business virtually.

And from there, it was just my job to execute the idea that you guys gave.

But I want to turn and also give a tremendous amount of credit to our parent company, Globe

Life, Larry and Gary, the co-CEO is there that own American income life.

I went to them and I said, look, this is what we need to do and we need to do it fast.

And I've got to tell you, their ability to make a quick decision and put the proper resources

behind it is what has allowed American income, not just to survive but to thrive during probably,

they call them business disruptors.

Simon, probably one of the single largest business disruptors in modern history.

No doubt.

And not only did we just survive it but we're thriving.

And so I just was in between Globe and the field and really that's sort of what my job

is to work in between those two groups of people and make it happen.

So, you know, it's painful on both sides.

I had friends of ours reach out and say, ask me, fellow entrepreneurs, how's everything

going?

And I almost felt bad to tell them the truth.

Who really wants to, who's at a down moment running a business and ask you, how you doing

over there, man?

And wants to hear you say, we're breaking records, buddy.

Are you really?

You know what I mean?

And so it was almost hard for me to deliver.

So what we ended up doing in this ain't for show.

This is for real is we just started to step up our giving.

You know, we started to give more things.

We started to seek out more things.

I almost felt like partially undeserving of the greatness that was coming our way in a

respect of, I got to do more and give more if I'm one of the people that's out here that's

blessed to be able to still continue to do business and have success.

And I know that you've been, that's been your spirit for as long as I've known you,

you know, the youth program that I started in Youngstown Inspire Minds.

You've been one of the main contributors and supporters you and Dana over the years,

without even me asking.

I mean, just random blessings, you know, from above have came by way of your family.

And so I know giving is a big part of who you are, not just on the company side and we

give.

You know, one of the things that one of my favorite parts of being on the executive council,

you know, for this company is that you guys bless us with $15,000 that just for being on

the council were able to give away to charitable organizations.

But I know outside of the company, this is the spirit of your family, you know, this

is what you do.

But what, you know, what kind of drives you to give?

What is your mindset and Dana's heart?

You know, your wife.

What is that whole giving thing mean to you guys?

So, you know, the first word that pops out is responsibility.

And you know, I've just always felt like you're blessed to be a blessing.

And there's a truth.

I feel Dana and I, you know, feel, feel very strongly the same way that, you know, it's

a responsibility of ours.

And we've been so blessed beyond our wildest dreams, what we could have ever imagined, that,

you know, we, it's just, it's something that's in us.

And, you know, it feels good because I've been on both ends of the deal.

I've been on the receiving end.

You know, that's part.

I've been on the receiving end.

Me too.

I've been on the receiving end.

And so I know what that end of it feels like as well.

And you know, a lot of its faith driven for us as well.

There's no doubt.

And we just know that, you know, you can't outgive God.

You know, we just like, even like, it's kind of like you had mentioned Simon.

You know, that the other night you was thinking about not going on a run and then something

inspired you to go on a run.

And you just, yeah, I think you, you were talking to Parker.

Yeah.

I think it's the same, same way we're giving like every once in a while, even when you

don't feel like it, that's when we go and, and, and, and do it.

And, and just out of a sense of responsibility.

Really, it'd be the best way I could tell you.

What about, I didn't get a chance to get your feel on, on the Cowboys thing, you know,

because that, to me, I've been, I've been with you.

I've been with the company a while now, going on 15 years in a, in a couple months,

it'll be 15 years for me.

And for me being a sports fan and specifically a football fan, you know, playing college football,

to, to be able to be there.

and sit there and listen and meet and be around

the same room of Jerry Jones and just us.

You know, it's not like Jerry Jones and 1,000 people

or 10,000 people is just Jerry Jones and us.

You know, what has that stuff been like for you

because I know you've gotten even closer than me.

Man, it was very inspiring.

You know, from, you know, obviously,

or I don't know if any of your listeners know

but his story starts in the insurance business.

And when he told his story,

and it being so similar to what so many of us do

and have done, it was very, very inspiring.

I'm just like his story was super inspiring

but what was really neat behind the scenes was just how humble

he was. I think a lot of times, you know,

you see people in like the media and, you know,

little clips of one type of thing.

The guy was just, I mean, you wouldn't know he's a billionaire.

Super down to earth, humble, want to picture, let's talk.

You know, just very, very casual.

And so, you know, it's just a reminder that people are people,

but you could tell that there's a tremendous amount of wisdom

there that comes from a long storyline of ups and downs

and some of the ups and downs were just mind blown.

You know, that, and so it was, I'm so glad we have that relationship

with them and them being here in Dallas

and we look forward to doing so much more with them.

Now on the flip side, this kind of interesting,

D. D. Murray Smith, you're talking about

easy executive director for the NFL Players Association.

And so what his job is is taking care of the players.

And so what you, what's awesome.

So I only met D one time.

I was in DC and one of our PR team hooked it up

and we got to meet D. It's sit down and talk with them

probably for a couple hours.

And I was blown away how passionate he was about his job.

And what I mean by that is his job is to get the most for the players,

to take care of the players, everything to do with the players.

It has nothing to do with the NFL and the owners.

It's almost like, you know, and I think by trade,

he might be a lawyer if I remember correctly.

So his job is to fight to make sure when their names

on the back of a shirt are getting paid,

when it's on a cup, they're getting paid,

their contracts, their retirement.

I mean, this guy has a fire burning passion

to take care of his people.

And that's what any good leader does is they fight for their people.

And so I tell you what, he was a ball of energy.

I said, I got to get this guy out to speak to our agency owners

at some point Simon.

He was a lot of fun.

And it's exactly how many S.S.R. for their people.

You're fighting to make sure your people

have the best opportunity, get the best resources, best offices,

you know, to make their deal go.

And so it's very neat to hang out with him and get to know him a little bit.

Well, you know, I remember you telling me that story

and that's super cool.

I know it's a transition because my whole up,

you know, bringing in sales here, I used to always, you know,

point to Gene Upshow, you know, on our Labor Advisory Board.

So I've had to even reteach myself.

It's deem where he Smith.

So I look forward to being able to put a face with the name.

But you know, as we wrap up, you know, I had one more thing,

but I don't know if you have anything before I wrap up.

Just a couple of things, man.

I know you and the family like to go fishing a lot, right?

Is that some of your hobbies?

Well, we went fishing.

I don't know if you went to Florida not too long ago.

We actually caught a shark.

I want to tell you since I know you're in the fishing and you know,

this is what you do.

You in Parker, right?

So we caught a shark.

It's big as him.

Yeah, almost in a grouper.

Five feet.

What type of grouper?

It was a grouper.

You're the grouper.

I'm going to grow you.

It was a grouper.

You're a grouper.

Oh, look, the grouper.

You be groping.

They said that that was me.

Hang on now.

That's my wife.

They said the grouper was him because he, because it was,

they said it was 400 pounds.

Yeah, crazy.

So they said, can you imagine there were like, what was it like?

You know, how can you explain it?

Listen, I was seasick.

I was bouncing from all it was bad for me.

I was on the way out.

I was going, you were a grouper, though.

Yeah, I thought you were going to run the trip.

I literally thought we were going to have to turn it back around for a pound.

He was, he was done for.

So they say you got the keys now.

How does it feel?

I don't think you understand what that means.

The keys, they say you have the keys now.

How does that feel, boss?

Yeah, the keys meaning like the keys set a car like running the show, running the ship.

Oh, yeah.

I tell you what,

Perm, I will tell you this, you know, you, you think you're going into a position and it's,

and it's a leadership position, right?

It's all about leadership.

But what I found out is it's really about stewardship.

And what I mean by that is, you know, when you look at our company,

you have Bernard that ran it and then you had Roger that had it from 99 until recently.

And in my, my time will only be a moment in time.

I will only be a small part of American income history.

The one thing this thing does is grow.

The one thing it does is get bigger and it's way bigger than any one person.

You know, when Bernard left the company, I don't know if you knew this, but it grew and then Roger left

in a group in many great SGA's have left the company and what does it do?

So I'm going to grow and my job is to be a good steward of the business to take what has been

given to me and make it better and leave it better for the next generation.

And so how does the field?

It's having brother.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, it's it's having.

I love it.

I love it.

You know, some, you know, people always say, you know, what, what do you got to do to be successful

steward?

What are two or three things, you know, that, that, that, you know,

would make me successful.

Yeah.

And I know you get that question a lot as well.

And what I'll tell you know, what I, what I would tell you is the first thing is you,

you know, you got to find God's calling on your life.

And that's a big one, you know, because like when you're 20, 20 hours, like Lord,

what a, you know, I, and I can't really help you with that.

But what I mean by that is if you can find, if you can figure out the gifts that you've been

given and figure out a way to use that.

So this word success, perm, really, it's a big broad word.

I mean, when people, you know, I was kind of wonder what people, when they say successful,

what do they mean by that?

You know, like, you know, yeah, so, so like it's not the amount necessarily in your check.

Um, because if you're fulfilling your purpose and using your gifts,

you look, there's many of people with a lot of money that are miserable, miserable people

because they have no purpose, no, no fulfillment in their life.

And, and so success can be defined so many different ways.

Uh, you know, but what I will tell you in general is, you know, if you find what your gifts are,

if you pick the right partner in life, and that's, that's a big one.

You know, I was big, a big piece of, of, you know, what, what I've been able to accomplish

has been through a, a partnership with my wife.

She's been an encourager.

She's been there to pick me up when I was down.

Um, I remember a story Simon that, that Dana told me, actually her dad told me, um,

and I, I, I think they wouldn't mind me sharing this.

When, when Dana was young, a couple of guys came to her dad and said, hey,

we want to start this business.

And it was a business that he was very familiar with.

He was in a pipe fit in a construction.

And he needed a certain amount of money to get started.

And the only way he could do that would be to take a second mortgage out on his house.

And so he went to his wife and said, hey, there's this great business opportunity.

Here's what we need to do in, in his wife, absolute Dana's mom, absolutely refused

to take out a second mortgage on the home.

And he said the bad thing was is the other guys went ahead and went into business.

And I spent the next 10 years working for them watching them get super wealthy,

becoming millionaires.

And I think that story hit very, very close to home with Dana.

Because Dana has always been a, a, a champion of anything that I want to do.

She goes, it's been so much in support of it.

And, you know, pick the right partner.

The last thing I'll tell you, this is one that I think most people wouldn't expect.

But it's been a critical piece to, I feel like mine and Dana's success in terms of

what we've been able to do as a family.

And it's something called delayed gratification, which isn't super popular with our young people.

With our young people, everybody, we live in a credit card society, man.

You know, like yesterday I wanted some, some earphones.

I wanted these, I, I pod pro, I had the regular ones, but I was like, I need to pro.

So I get on Amazon and boom, same day they're here at the house.

I was like, wow, you know what I mean?

Like sometimes usually I got away today or two, three days, especially since COVID,

you know what I mean?

With all the deliveries and everything that bam, these babies were here, you know, same afternoon.

And this delayed gratification, the reason why I bring it up is something that Dana and I were able to do early on

really helped us out a few different times by delaying and not buying certain things.

When we went through a tough time in our business, we had the money to pay for it.

We have the, you know, we have the money to, you know, to get through some of the tough times.

But more importantly, people always asked about, you know, opportunities and what I've told them is,

you know, in your life, I don't know, you might have five good opportunities that come in front of you.

Maybe less.

The question is when the opportunity comes, can you capitalize on it?

And I've been very fortunate that I've only had a couple.

I'm talking about home runs, home run deals.

That came in front of me and I looked at it and because we had delayed because we had lived beyond our means.

I'm not saying we didn't live comfortable and I'm saying we didn't have nice things.

But because we did delayed, we were able to capitalize on some of those opportunities and those turned into game changers,

you know, for the family.

And I can tell you, there were other people say maybe even family members that I said,

hey, here's an opportunity and they, they couldn't make the play because they had pretty much spent everything they had.

And so you never know when those are going to present themselves, but those are a couple of key things for me.

You know, find what your purposes, understand what your gifts are.

Pick the right partner.

I say that because huge, you know, Freddie, Freddie always says she's either on your side or on your back.

Right.

And I've been so blessed to have Dana on my side this entire time.

Truth.

And it just makes you so much stronger as a person and then be prepared.

You know, whether it's American income life was, you know, whether it's a CEO thing.

And I end with this time.

And and because I know we got to get off here, I think everybody thinks that

once you're successful, that everything's easy and everything's easy and life permanent, you don't have to,

you don't have to sacrifice anymore and there's no more adversity.

What Simon can tell you back in 2015, my business was having the best year it had ever had.

And I made a decision to go to the home office.

And for the next four years, I lived in an apartment.

I flew out on Monday morning, flew back on Friday night, got home at seven o'clock.

Wow.

And for four years, when my son was in high school, my daughter was wrapping up high school.

I lived in Dallas while they lived in McKenna.

We didn't need to do it for the money.

Okay.

We had already had that all taken care of.

We'd already moved all around the country and done everything that we needed to do.

We did it for, for me, and they lived that they lived in Houston and you lived in Dallas.

Yes.

Yes.

I lived in Dallas.

They lived in Houston.

And so what, the point I'm trying to get across to you is 400 plane flights.

400 plane flights.

Wow.

400 plane flights.

And Monday through Friday being gone from the house in their new agents or people getting started

saying, oh, I got to miss something tonight.

I miss everything.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Friday until Friday at seven o'clock at night.

And so when I didn't have to do it, 15 years deep in this deal,

when essentially, we're on top of the world.

But I think that's the thing that I hope we get across to somebody on the phone call today.

It's that mindset of you're always going to have to continue to give up, to go up.

It never stops.

You can't be afraid of it and understand that it's only temporary.

My family's here now.

We have a beautiful home.

Everything's okay.

Everybody's calmed down.

It was just a moment in time where we had to put things on hold to make greatness happen.

And things come together and it's not that long.

So if you're out there, pay the price, pay it faster, pay it harder.

Be looking in the eye, man.

Get excited about it knowing that it's going to be behind you in a short period of time.

And I think once you get started, sometimes that's the hardest part.

Hey, man, I love it.

400 flights to now on your own flight, right?

Your own jet, right?

Let's go on the PJ, baby.

PJ.

Not the projects, no more.

That's the problem.

I have a jet, not to pajamas.

And I tell you this, man, that first of all,

thank you for cutting time out for us to be on the groundcast

with us.

But genuinely, I'll tell you it feels good, man,

to know that regardless, I'm gonna go hard for my people.

I'm gonna go hard for my family, regardless of who's in office.

Just like, I don't care who's the president of the United States.

I'm still gonna be an American.

I'm still gonna keep it pushing and keep on grinding.

But it does give me a little bit extra of a boost and extra confidence

to know the type of man that you are, the type of husband that you are,

the type of father that you are, and the type of friend that you've been for me.

But before all of this, we were friends first,

and peers first, man.

And I can just tell you for the listeners out there that are with our company,

that you couldn't have a better person.

And even with Larry and Gary, at Globe, I mean, just the future couldn't be

in better hands of better character people than the people that we have,

currently right now up there which includes you, man.

So thank you for being you.

Thank you for your time.

And thanks for joining us on another episode of the groundcast.

Get ready, it's a new day.

Count money, man.

Money back riches.

I'm trying to talk, I'm trying to talk to my beast, but...