Austin L.:
Hello, and welcome to the Life Insurance Academy Podcast, where we believe that any insurance agent with the right training, tools, and community can be successful. I’m your host, Austin Lopesilvero, and I’ll be taking you into the conversations of top-producing life insurance agents so that you can level up your business, increase your profit, and maximize your impact.

Austin L.:
To be the first to know about new episodes and announcements, check out liapodcast.org/updates, or subscribe to our YouTube channel, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at @Lifeinsureacad.

Roger Short:
Well, good afternoon, good day, good morning, good evening, and good night, everyone. We are back with another episode of the Life Insurance Academy. I’ve got my good friend Chris Ball right here.

Chris Ball:
What up?

Roger Short:
And we’ve got a special guest all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Marlin Faulkner. Marlin is a multimillion-dollar insurance producer and a seven-figure agency builder. And man, how special is it that we get to have you on the podcast today? We are excited. Welcome to the Life Insurance Academy Podcast, Marlin. How are you, man?

Chris Ball:
Welcome.

Marlin Faulkner:
I am unbelievably excited to be on here with you gentlemen, you fine gents, and just want to be a part of something special. And I’m excited to be on. I’ve heard about this, and I’m a huge fan, so just love what you’re doing and just want to partner with you guys.

Roger Short:
Boom. Well, Marlin, man, we got to know each other a little bit a few weeks back, and of course, I saw and heard your story. You’re famous on YouTube. You just YouTube Marlin Faulkner, and boom, it comes up. He’s blowing up all over YouTube. You can check him out. This one’s going to blow up on YouTube, too, Marlin. It’s going to be big. So I heard your story before. You didn’t hear ours, and we got connected at the S.W.A.T. event in Dallas, Texas, with Nate Auffort. And I know you have a special relationship with that man. And we had a phenomenal weekend together. And I heard you. You came on stage, man, and you lit the place up.

Chris Ball:
Loads of energy.

Roger Short:
Not just the energy, man.

Chris Ball:
Passion.

Roger Short:
When he cracked those lips, and he flashed those pearly whites and that smile, man, that smile was beaming …

Chris Ball:
A million-dollar smile.

Roger Short:
… from the front of the room all the way to the back. There was hundreds of people on their feet. There was smoke going off. There was fire shows. There was lights. And man, Marlin’s smile was just beaming through it. Marlin, you lit up the room. You had an unbelievable message. You were impassioned. You were caring. You were thoughtful. You were intentional. And man, you dropped some wisdom, and I learned some great stuff from you. Immediately after you were done, I don’t know if you remember this, I came up, and I said, “Marlin, we got to get to know each other. You’re someone I want to know.” And you were like, “You, too. We got to connect.” And so we got connected, and man, now here we are. We are excited, man, to have you on this show today. That was an exciting, exciting event.

Roger Short:
Marlin, before we get started, because we’re going to jump in today, and we’re going to be talking about strategies to build a seven-figure agency. So, for the listeners that are on this podcast today, we’re going to be hearing five key strategies that you can implement into your business, even if you’re a single producer right now. You just got started, or you’ve been in the business two or three years, and you’ve got a small team, you’re going to learn five key strategies to implement to take your business from where it is now to build a million-dollar-plus agency.

Chris Ball:
A lot of times, agents, I know you guys are listening to this while you’re driving. This is a great one, too. Don’t write while you’re driving. I don’t recommend that. But go ahead and listen to it, but you’ll want to listen to it again to take some notes because this is going to have a massive impact on your business.

Roger Short:
This is a two-timer.

Chris Ball:
Two-timer, in a good way.

Roger Short:
You got to come back and listen to this one two times, two times, two times. Marlin, before we jump in, man, you’ve been in the business for quite a while. How many years you been in the insurance business?

Marlin Faulkner:
A lot of it’s a fog now, but I want to say about 17, 18 years.

Roger Short:
Wow. So you just didn’t start this?

Marlin Faulkner:
No.

Roger Short:
No, you’ve been in for a little while. You’ve been in for a while.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yes.

Roger Short:
And from our stories, our discussion prior to the podcast, you had shared with me how many different companies and opportunities you were with. There were six or seven different companies and opportunities that you had started with. And why all the companies, and then what happened back five, six years ago that changed everything for you?

Marlin Faulkner:
No, absolutely. I remember … and again, thank you so much, Roger and Chris. I just appreciate you guys. When you got off of the stage, I wanted to talk to you, but I was getting prepared to do my speech. But when I met you, I knew there was something different. I didn’t know. I’m still mad at Cody Askins for not introducing us. I’ve got a bone to pick with him because he should have introduced us. He should’ve known we were two power players, buddy, or three. I kind of consider you guys one, Chris, like Roger. You guys are-

Roger Short:
We’re one.

Chris Ball:
We’re kind of like Voltron.

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:05:12] together.

Chris Ball:
I don’t know if you remember Voltron, but we’re one big machine.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, kind of like a Voltron. But one of the first lessons I learned in insurance was, you got to fail your way to success. And see, I was already doing that. I didn’t know what I was doing, and so I just kept looking for opportunities. The story I told before was, I was playing basketball right out of college, and I had a day off. I was selling cars, and I had a day off, and I went to the gym. And every time I went to the gym, it didn’t matter which day it was, I saw this young man. He was around my age, just right out of college. And he was always at the gym. It didn’t matter what day it was. And I finally asked him one day, “What do you do for work? Why are you always here? Do you have a job? Do you want to come sell cars?”

Chris Ball:
Are you a trust fund baby? How do I be one?

Marlin Faulkner:
“Did you win the lottery? Why are you always here?” And he said, “I sell insurance.” And at the time, not knowing, you don’t know what you don’t know, I was like, “Insurance? Buddy, you got to come sell cars. This is where it’s at.” But I realized he drove two or three different cars. He was always at the gym. And so the next time I saw him, I said, “Hey, why did you sell insurance? Why don’t you do something else, real estate, or sell cars?”

Marlin Faulkner:
He said, “Because if you sell a home once, you get paid once. If you sell a car once, you get paid once. If you sell windows, if you sell anything, ice cream, it doesn’t matter what it is, you get paid once.” He said, “With insurance, you sell a product once, you get paid forever.” And he walked off. I never saw him again. Don’t know his name, still to this day.

Roger Short:
He walked off. Wow!

Marlin Faulkner:
But it was a turning point in my life. He walked off kind of like dropping the mic. He walked off.

Roger Short:
It’s like a movie scene, man. It’s like an opening of a movie.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, it was like a movie scene. When I write my movie, that’ll be a part of the movie. I don’t know who this gentleman is. I hope I find him. But I knew that day when I went home, I began to look at the world different. I began to look at selling cars different. And what happened, Roger, was I realized that I wanted more in life. And much more than realizing I wanted more, I realized that I was made for more. Not that selling cars is a bad deal. I loved selling cars, but I knew I was created to make an impact in the world, and so I started down my journey of insurance.

Marlin Faulkner:
I worked for Farmers. I worked for State Farm. I worked for Aflac. I worked for Geico. I worked for All State. I worked for Senior Life. I worked for Primerica or Prime America. It depends on where you’re at in the country how you say that. I worked for all those companies, and here’s the kicker. Here’s the first lesson. I never had success with any of those companies. No, not one of them. The average income I made in insurance, my average before I found the company I’m with now, was $30,000 a year.

Chris Ball:
Wow.

Marlin Faulkner:
That was a good year, Chris. When I was making $30,000, I was taking my friends to Sizzlin. I was taking my wife to Montgomery Ward, like, “Pick out whatever you want, baby.”

Chris Ball:
Montgomery Ward.

Marlin Faulkner:
$30,000, the most money I’ve ever made …

Roger Short:
Yeah, let’s go to Ryan’s Steakhouse, man. Let’s go to Ryan’s and get the rolls.

Chris Ball:
You can get the roll.

Marlin Faulkner:
I didn’t know that there was anything better. But again, I remember in the back of my mind, there was a young man that had multiple cars. And so I knew that this was the industry that I could make it in, that I can make an impact. I just didn’t know how, so I had to turn over every rock. I had to keep going. And that’s the one thing that most people do that don’t have successes. They quit. And so what I did was I just never quit. I’m a homeless guy that just stunk at everything he’s ever done. I just didn’t quit.

Roger Short:
Hold on a minute.

Chris Ball:
Yeah, that slid in there.

Roger Short:
You just dropped the homeless word there. Right? I’m going to come back to that because I was getting ready to ask you about this high school state football championship you won in Florida. You got in the insurance business, and you were a winner. You actually took a high school team to a state championship and won it. I mean, average people don’t do that.

Marlin Faulkner:
I wasn’t the head coach. I was one of the assistant coaches. But one of the things that … I didn’t have a good childhood growing up. I’ll come back into that. But I never had a father. I never had someone that really cared about me. I had a dad, but I don’t consider him a father because he was abusive to us, to my sisters and me. And so, I didn’t really have a father. But what happened over the next 20 years was, I’ve always been surrounded by great men. And so, when I went to Florida, a guy by the name of Bill Kramer, who was a high school football coach, he’s going in the Hall of Fame in Florida for coaching football.

Marlin Faulkner:
And he called me up, and I was working at an inner-city camp in Missouri for the summers. I’d graduated college, didn’t know what I was going to do. He said, “Why don’t you come coach football?” I said, “Why? I played football, but why?” He said, “I heard that you love kids, and you love people.” And he said, “I can teach you how to coach football, but I can’t teach you how to love kids.” And I said, “I’m in.”

Marlin Faulkner:
And I went. And when we won our state championship, I think it was the third year I was there, and he went on to win five or six more championships. He’s in the Hall of Fame now. But I’ve always been surrounded by great men. It’s no testament to me. It was just, I was in the right place at the right time, and I think I had really good energy and was a big part of that. So I got to win a state championship in the state of Florida.

Roger Short:
So you learned some really good principles trying to figure out your way to success, got in the insurance business because what you saw was opportunity, kept bouncing around, never really made more than $30,000. And then something, obviously, a pivotal point, happened in your life. Some things happened, some adversities. And obviously, we’re on the other side of that now. Can you tell us about what happened and what those turning points were for you?

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah. Before I do that, I want to say that my son won a state championship in football last year.

Roger Short:
Awesome, man.

Chris Ball:
Congratulations.

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:11:03] basketball. so we’re just winners, man.

Roger Short:
I love that attitude, man.

Chris Ball:
I love it.

Marlin Faulkner:
We’re just winners, man.

Roger Short:
I love that attitude, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
My son is 6’5″. He was 6’5″ and 350. He’s lost a bunch of weight. I thought he was going to play college football, but here’s what I love about this business. This is a generational business. He said, “I want to sell insurance.”

Chris Ball:
That’s great.

Roger Short:
Wow! Cool.

Marlin Faulkner:
He got accepted to the University of Oklahoma, and he’s going to go four years. And we’re going to start working on him joining the ranks here, creating his own legacy for his family.

Roger Short:
Love it. Beautiful, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
I couldn’t have done that if I was working for somebody else, I don’t think, or if I was in a different industry. I don’t think when I was doing other things that my son wanted to follow me. He watched me struggle. But I’ve gotten to a place where we are now, and there is no great … You couldn’t pay me enough money to realize the impact that’s made when the fruit of your loins, when your children want to follow in your footsteps. There’s not enough money on Earth. And so I know that now, my children’s children’s children will have a great feature because we’ve started something that started with me, and we get to take this forever. And so, just blessed to be so-

Chris Ball:
I do have a question. It’s resonating in my head. That’s what happens. Somebody talks, boom, it plants there. You know? So you’re in the gym. I’m going back, back, back. Okay? You’re in the gym. You’re seeing the guy shoot hoops, the insurance dude, and you said something. You said, “I knew I was made for more.” Is that what you said? How did you say that? You said …

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah. I always wanted more. People have wants and desires, but it’s the difference between manifesting something in your life and attracting something in your life. I just believe I was created for more.

Chris Ball:
That’s great, so-

Marlin Faulkner:
And I believe if anyone really looks inside themselves, all we are are human beings on this human experience, trying to find ourselves. I think when people find the best version of themselves, they explode in whatever it is they’re doing, whether it’s athletics, business, teaching, selling, whatever it is. I believe that, Chris, when I would lay my head down at night, there was always, in the back of my mind, there was always more, not the money, not the stuff. I wanted that stuff. Everyone wants that stuff. Right? Everyone wants to be a millionaire, but you know what Tony Robbins said? He said he never wanted to be a millionaire, he had to be. It was a must and not a want. And that just was in the back of my mind that I was created for more.

Chris Ball:
That’s great. Yeah.

Roger Short:
I love it, man. And I think people need to hear that really strongly. And we’re going to throw Coach Burt in here, a Coach Burt-ism here. Can I say Burt-ism? Is that-

Chris Ball:
A Coach Burtism?

Roger Short:
Yeah, but he says-

Chris Ball:
A codification?

Roger Short:
A codification. He says closing something is bringing two things together. And somehow, that closed for you this idea there’s something more. I’m made for something more. Impact, impact, insurance. And those two pieces came together, man. And all of a sudden, there’s fruit. I mean, it’s impacting your family. I love that, just your story and how it came together. That’s a powerful thing.

Chris Ball:
So what happened? What was the transition? What was the pivotal point? What adversity was happening for you to transition from somebody who never made more than 30 to where you are today with a multiple seven-figure agency?

Marlin Faulkner:
The biggest thing for me was, I wasn’t the man that I needed to be. I was married to my beautiful wife. We had four children, and I was chasing money because I knew there was something more in me. I thought it was that I was going after money, and that wasn’t it. If you want to have more, you got to become more. I heard this a long time ago that money never leads. It always follows. And so if money was following me, where would it follow me to because I wasn’t going anywhere. I had to begin to go somewhere for money to follow me.

Marlin Faulkner:
And so the adversity that I went through was, we all understand that marriage is hard. And so I was married. I wasn’t a good husband. I was not. I wasn’t a good father. I didn’t have a good example of a father to pull from, so I was just doing it myself. And my wife and I agreed that it was probably better for us not to be married. And so I packed up my stuff, threw it into my … I had a maroon Ford Taurus because my other two cars had been repossessed. So that car was from a buy-here, pay-here lot, by the way. And my wife said, “See you. Me and the kids can do this without you.”

Marlin Faulkner:
And I thought, “Good. Do it without me. I’m going to go find things out.” And I left, and I had nowhere to go. You really find out who your friends are when you got nothing. Everyone’s got their hands out now. Everyone wants to hang out. Everyone wants to talk. When I had nothing, I didn’t have any friends that … “Sorry, you can’t stay here.” I didn’t have enough money, so I slept in my car. I slept at a YMCA. I slept at a John 3:16, which is a men’s shelter. I ate food out of trash cans for months.

Marlin Faulkner:
But during that time, I did something that most people wouldn’t do, and I tell people this. There’s something worse than being homeless, Roger. Something worse than being homeless was, I was hopeless. There are people right now listening to this podcast, I don’t know who they are, they have a home. They have a car. They’ve got money in the bank, but they’re hopeless about where they’re going. They’re no different than I was. And see, not only was I homeless, but I was hopeless, so that was a cocktail for danger for me.

Roger Short:
Yeah, your physical state doesn’t predetermine your mental and emotional state, does it?

Marlin Faulkner:
No. And so what I did was, I didn’t want to live. I was Skyping because we didn’t have Zoom. We had Skype back then, so I was Skyping my kids goodnight or calling them on the telephone. And I was feeling less and less and less like a man, less and less and less like a human being. And the only reason I didn’t end it … there was a lot of dark nights. I don’t wish that on anybody, Chris. I don’t wish that anybody would ever be homeless, without their family, without people they love because they weren’t good. And that was me.

Marlin Faulkner:
The only reason I didn’t end it was because I wanted my kids to know that I fought for something. I wanted them to know that I tried, that I gave it my all. In my whole life, I had never given it my all in anything, not in my relationship with my wife, not in being a son, not in school, not in any job. I’d never given it 100%. So I thought this thought, “What if I gave it 100%?”What if I do this thing to the best of my ability? If I was created for more, what if? And weirdly enough, I forgave my father. I think forgiveness is a big deal to growth.

Chris Ball:
100%.

Marlin Faulkner:
I forgave him that night. Two nights later, Nate Auffort, my mentor, called me up and asked me to watch a video about a company in Symmetry Financial Group about coming on board. And I’d done insurance forever. He’d never done insurance. He didn’t know I was homeless. He said, “Here, watch this video.” So, Roger, a lot of dark times in that timeframe because I wasn’t the person I needed to be. My wife was a good woman, and she needed a strong man, and I wasn’t a strong man. I wasn’t a strong father. There were times that I would be looking at my kids, and I’d be counting kids, and I’d be counting food. I’d be counting meals in the refrigerator, and I had more kids that had meals.

Roger Short:
That’s not a good place.

Marlin Faulkner:
There were plenty of times-

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:19:00]

Roger Short:
That’s not a good spot to be.

Marlin Faulkner:
No. You’ve got children. Imagine your wife calling you up, and you’re on food stamps because you don’t have enough money. You’ve got four kids, and you’re making $15,000 a year. And she calls you up, and you’re at a buddy’s house drunk. And she says, “Hey, the food stamp card isn’t working. I’m in line with two cards with $800 of food. I need help.” And I said, “Well, I’m not around right now. Figure it out. I’m hanging up the phone.” I wasn’t a good man, but I knew there was goodness in me.

Marlin Faulkner:
I wonder how many people out there, if they were really honest with themselves … Coach Burt always asked me … that’s my coach, Coach Michael Burt. He always asked me, “Do you got another gear in you?” I wonder how many people, if I asked them right now if you really had to take an inventory of your life, are you giving it 100%? Are you just wanting what the 100% get? Do you got another gear in you?

Chris Ball:
Yeah, most people know. Most people know they got a gear or two, or three in most cases, if they’re honest with themselves. And you were honest.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, 100%. So it was a dark time, and I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it. But in that time … I’ll talk about this later, but I began to dream. And most people, when they are at the bottom of their life … See, I was always taught that rock bottom is a great place to build a foundation. All right? When people think rock bottom is bad … I hit rock bottom. It hurts, but it’s a great place to build a foundation. And so, Chris, when I hit rock bottom, I just started dreaming. What if I became great at something? What if I gave 100%? What if I saved my marriage? What if I was the father that I was always meant to be? So I began to talk to myself and look in the mirror, in that rearview mirror, and talk to myself about how great I could be someday.

Chris Ball:
A question for you in regards to that, and I appreciate that. That was a powerful question. What if? What if? What if? Nate shows you this video, and is that the spark for you? Was that the spark in the beginning of those conversations? And was that what brought to you to be able to dream? Or was that just a catalyst, and you were ready? You were ready for someone to give you a hand.

Marlin Faulkner:
I think it was the catalyst. I think I was ready for it. But what it allowed me to do, because when Nate called me and when I watched that video, I started crying. I was sitting on my buddy Brian Henson’s porch because he was letting me live with him and his wife. And I had been there for about two weeks. I wasn’t paying bills. I was eating all of their food. I was sleeping on the couch. I was making a mess. And the only reason I was outside on their porch was because they were fighting inside about if I could stay one more night, or one more week, or one more …

Chris Ball:
Oh, man. That’s awkward.

Marlin Faulkner:
And so when Nate called, it was perfect timing. Do you know what kind of mental state that puts you in when you can hear people arguing about if you can sleep on a couch or a bed? What do you think that does to your self-image?

Chris Ball:
Oh, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
And Nate Auffort calls me up. And I watched the video, which I tell people it’s weird because I was homeless, but I still had a phone. I think it was a Cricket phone, but I watched the video and-

Chris Ball:
Cricket, we are not sponsored by Cricket.

Marlin Faulkner:
… and I really started crying because I thought, for the first time in my life, I had hope again.

Chris Ball:
Yeah, hope. That’s powerful.

Marlin Faulkner:
I had hope that this company could take me somewhere I’ve never been, that this company, because it can allow me to become the person I was always meant to be. This company can add value to me, and I could add value to it, so I started crying. And what I did next, I’ll never know I did, but I called my wife, and I said, “I’m coming home.” And she said, “No, you’re not.” And I drove home, and I lived in the driveway for another week and a half. And I told her, “Give me some time to prove to you that this will work.” See, I fought for my marriage.

Roger Short:
Good for you, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s what’s wrong now. I don’t think people are willing to fight for what they believe in. I think that a lot of times, before I got involved in Symmetry, and before I started doing personal development, I’d get on social media sites, and I was brave behind a keyboard. But it takes something to fight for what you believe in. I believed in that family. I believed in my wife. I believed in being a father. And so I went home, and I fought for it. And I was able to salvage my marriage. My wife was so gracious to give me another chance at life. See, I believe that everybody deserves a second chance in life. It’s my core belief. And I have that belief because my wife taught me that. She gave me a second chance at life, so I’m forever grateful for her. She’s the best wife that’s on the planet Earth. She’s great.

Roger Short:
I’m going to send her the link to this episode first.

Marlin Faulkner:
Please do. That was a plug for my wife.

Chris Ball:
That’s awesome.

Roger Short:
So you got started into this thing. And so, did you master selling first, or did you master showing the business plan first and? What was that balance look like for you when you first got started? Did you see it as an insurance sales opportunity? Did you see it as a business development opportunity? How did you look at the business?

Marlin Faulkner:
I looked at the business like it was a food opportunity, like I needed a good food opportunity.

Roger Short:
A food opportunity. That’s a good answer, man. There’s that smile. Look at that smile, man. That’s awesome.

Marlin Faulkner:
My son, he’s 6’5″, 350. He wouldn’t have gotten there if I wasn’t keeping food on the table.

Roger Short:
Oh, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
He might’ve ate-

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:24:38] That’s all I knew. Zig Ziglar’s son has a book, and he talks about the stages of life. He talks about survival, and stability, and success, and significance, and I was in survival mode. I didn’t know about personal development. I didn’t know about any of that. I just knew I had to put food on the table. And I wanted to do it worse than anybody else because nobody knew. You know what’s so cool about this business? Nobody knew I was homeless except for Nate. I met Matt Smith and Brad Smith. I called them the Wonder Twins. They’re unbelievable. And Edward Pritchett, I met these men. They didn’t know I was homeless. I didn’t want them to know, so I had to get to work.

Roger Short:
Yeah. Why would you?

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, I was embarrassed of it. People think it’s a great story now, but it’s still embarrassing a little bit. I wasn’t good enough as a man to take care of my wife and kids. It’s not a great story. But what I did with that, and where I took off from there, that is the story. I didn’t see it really as an opportunity. I just saw it as Nate offered, I’d watch him make millions of dollars in other ventures. And the last deal that, before I was homeless, he got me into another event and offered me $50. He helped me get into that company by loaning me $50, and I still haven’t paid back that $50. But I’ve helped him earn millions of dollars.

Roger Short:
He’s appreciative of-

Marlin Faulkner:
He’s earned millions of dollars because of me.

Roger Short:
He’s appreciative of not getting the 50 back.

Chris Ball:
Well, it’s part of the story now. It’s a part of the lore.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s all he cares about is the 50 bucks.

Roger Short:
Now it’s a part of the lore. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Chris Ball:
It can never exchange hands. It will ruin the whole thing.

Roger Short:
Marlin, did you sell a policy first, or did you show the business plan first?

Marlin Faulkner:
I sold a policy first. But you have to understand, Nate offered his first month, never doing insurance before, wrote $50,000 in annual premium volume. I had been in insurance at that point for-

Roger Short:
That must have drove you nuts.

Marlin Faulkner:
… nine years to 10 years, and I wrote $2,300.

Roger Short:
$2,300 in the first month.

Marlin Faulkner:
But listen, in my first month that $2,300, again, it was like a million dollars because I had been homeless. So again, I was like, “Kids, let’s go to Sizzlin. Babe, let’s go to Montgomery Ward.” It was-

Roger Short:
Anything on the rack, baby.

Roger Short:
[crosstalk 00:26:59]

Chris Ball:
Montgomery Ward, there it is again. TJ Maxx, baby. Let’s go light it up.

Marlin Faulkner:
Let’s go light it up. Listen, we’re stopping at Braum’s on the way home or Dairy Queen. But still, for me, that first month, I wrote $2,300, and Nate Auffort had a conversation with me. And he said, “We know the biggest teams win. And so if you want to be one of the biggest teams, you should start recruiting.” Now, this was another turning point in my career. He said, “When do you want to start recruiting?” And I said the same thing-

Roger Short:
Everybody says it.

Marlin Faulkner:
… 99.9% of the people say when you ask them about building a business or recruiting. I said, or maybe it was just me, Roger.

Roger Short:
No, I don’t believe that for a second.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, I said-

Roger Short:
Did it have something to do with you getting good first? Did it?

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah. You’re a mind reader. I said, “Let me get good first.”

Roger Short:
Yeah. Oh, wow! That’s amazing that we both knew what that answer was.

Marlin Faulkner:
Let me figure this whole thing out. Yeah, I don’t know how you knew that. Let me figure this whole thing out, and then I’ll bless you with the ability to recruit, and I’ll go recruit. You know how many times I’ve heard that?

Chris Ball:
Oh, my gosh, yeah.

Marlin Faulkner:
But he was a good enough mentor to say, “Marlin,” he said, “You’re homeless right now. How long do we have to wait for you to be good at this?” He said, “My mentor taught me that most people do the same things. They go to school. They get good grades. They go to high school, and they get good grades so they can go to the college. And then they get to college, and they get a good grade so they can get a good job. And then they work at that job for the next 30 or 40 years, and then they retire. They live the next 15 to 20 years doing whatever they want.”

Marlin Faulkner:
Nate Auffort told me, he said, “What my mentor taught me was, what if you flip that? What if you work hard for the next five, seven years? You put all your energy, all your time, all your effort, everything. You don’t sleep. You go to bed late, and you get up early. You put all that work in for five years, then you live the next 30 to 40 years doing whatever you want.” He said, “Which plan sounds better to you?” And I said, “The second one.” He says, “So do you want to start recruiting five months from now?”

Chris Ball:
Five weeks from now.

Marlin Faulkner:
Five weeks from now?

Chris Ball:
Five days from now.

Marlin Faulkner:
Five days from now?

Chris Ball:
Five minutes from now.

Marlin Faulkner:
Five minutes from now?

Chris Ball:
Yeah.

Marlin Faulkner:
And I said, “Five seconds from now.”

Chris Ball:
I’ve heard him say that.

Roger Short:
He said five seconds.

Marlin Faulkner:
So this is what he told me. He said, “Now, I want you to make a list. Get me on the phone with 20 people in the next seven days, and I’ll work with you. If you don’t get me on the phone with 20 people in the next seven days, I won’t work with you.” Now mind you, Roger, Chris, he was in the process of recruiting 69 people his first month in the business. I was just one of them. I didn’t want to be left behind. So because I didn’t want to be left behind, I went and did the work. I failed tremendously. I got him on the phone with 19 people, and I never looked back.

Chris Ball:
Awesome.

Roger Short:
Wow! So he was actually showing the business plan for you to people that you put in front of him.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s all I did was put people in front of him. We’ll talk about how to build a business. It’s hard to build this by yourself. I tell people, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you go together.” Right? And so, I had a mentor in Nate Auffort. I had mentors in Matt and Brad Smith and Edward Pritchett that were all … they say it takes a community to raise a child. It takes a community to make Marlin Faulkner an insurance agent. It took a lot of people to get me where I needed to get to, but it was unbelievable because all I had to do was send them to him. He would do the talking. He would do the motivating. He would do the overview for people, so it was unbelievable.

Roger Short:
That’s awesome, man. So let’s dive in, man. We got some agents chomping at the bit. And so, they tuned in because of the title of his podcast. And we’re talking about strategies to build a seven-figure agency. And I know that you just didn’t wake up and figure these out. This is a part of your DNA. This is a part of who you are. It’s how you communicate. It’s what you believe. And these are fundamental principles that you’ve applied to build your business. You came into an environment that was already growth-oriented.

Roger Short:
So one of the things that I want to point out, Chris, and so we hear that sometimes, and we see it on blogs, and we see it on the Facebook pages and things like that like. Nobody should be recruiting people until you’ve got at least a year or two in the business and you know how to train and motivate your people because otherwise, you’re doing them a disservice. And you’ll see these posts, and people get on and say, “Absolutely right. If you don’t know how to answer the questions, and you got to go to your manager, then you don’t deserve to be an upline.” And I’m thinking-

Roger Short:
[crosstalk 00:31:40] go ahead.

Chris Ball:
I’ll tell you it reminds me of going into a record store and the record snobs.

Roger Short:
Records snobs?

Chris Ball:
Yeah, the records snobs. Back in the day, you would go into a record store and look at their music-

Roger Short:
You would?

Chris Ball:
Yeah.

Roger Short:
Or I would?

Chris Ball:
Or we’ll use something different like a coffee house.

Roger Short:
Coffee house, yes.

Chris Ball:
A coffee shop, and they’re the coffee snobs. “Oh, you drink this? You don’t taste these types of notes?”

Roger Short:
You drink regular coffee? You should just go to the regular shop.

Chris Ball:
You don’t whisper pour-over? You don’t whisper pour-over?

Roger Short:
You don’t appreciate the subtleties of the fruit and the flesh on the pour-overs?

Chris Ball:
I’ll have how about one of those frappes. How about a frappe?

Roger Short:
Frappes. They don’t serve frappes there.

Chris Ball:
We see these pages, and they say, “Don’t do it, don’t do it.” And what the people that are making these posts don’t realize is that if you’re a part of a good system, a part of a good organization, you’re inviting people not to follow you.

Roger Short:
Amen.

Chris Ball:
Right? Not to actually learn everything from you, you’re inviting them in as a part of a system where you guys can learn together how to become better, learn together from a proven system that’s already been laid out. Insurance has been proven for how many years? Is their success in the insurance industry? And they say you shouldn’t recruit anybody unless you know how to be successful. What? Am I going to be the barrier for those guys’ success because of my limited capacity to talk to somebody, or to recruit somebody, or to train? Why is that limit this other person’s opportunity? Invite them into a system.

Chris Ball:
And so, that’s one of the things that I appreciate about you and the organization that you represent is that you understand there’s a system that you’re inviting them to. And you’re inviting them to do it with them, not for that, not have all the answers for them. You’re doing it with them. And so there’s power in that. But let’s talk about, man, let’s dive into and talk about these five strategies you’ve got for building a seven-figure agency. And I’m going to let you riff on this because when the people listen to it on the two times, when they’re taking notes on the second time, we’re going to get these down. Okay? And we’re going to create a track record or a system to build a million-dollar agency. Go. It’s all yours, brother. What are they?

Marlin Faulkner:
Awesome, awesome. You want me to name them off, or one-by-one, talk about them?

Chris Ball:
No, you can hit them one at a time. I would hit them one at a time from the top. Yeah. Just what are the things that you know are vital to build and scale a business?

Marlin Faulkner:
I want to say, first of all, I’m forever grateful. I couldn’t thank the owners of our company enough because they created these systems. I’m just a good student. I study speaking. I want to be the number one speaker in the universe. And so, I can’t say the world because Eric Thomas is the best speaker in the world. I want to be the best speaker in the universe. But without Brandon Ellison, Brian Pope, and Casey Watkins … they’ve implemented all these things, and I just became a good student.

Marlin Faulkner:
T.D. Jake said the other day … I was listening to one of his audios. He said the best speakers are the best students because they have to learn it and regurgitate it. And so, I just became a wonderful student. And so, all I am is a homeless guy who listened and did exactly what I was told. That’s it. Now people still come to me and say, “Man, there’s Marlin, the homeless guy.” I’m not homeless anymore, guys. I have a really big.

Roger Short:
Who let you in?

Marlin Faulkner:
We’re members of a golf community.

Roger Short:
There you go.

Marlin Faulkner:
We’re going to build our dream million-dollar home. I’m not homeless anymore, but I was. But these are things that I’ve taught. I was just a homeless guy. I just followed the system. The problem with me most of my life and the problem with most people is, they delineate from the system.

Chris Ball:
Correct.

Marlin Faulkner:
And if you’ll follow the system to a tee if the system’s working, then why can’t I? So number one is culture.

Roger Short:
Hm, culture.

Marlin Faulkner:
The number one thing you have to have to build a seven-figure duplicatable business is you have to have culture. I think culture eats talent for breakfast. Why do I say that? I’ll give you two examples. My first conference I went to with Symmetry, they brought a woman on stage, and her husband had just died. He passed away from an accident, and she didn’t have her insurance license. I saw the owners, Brandon, Brian, and Casey, step in, and they said, “We’re going to hold your husband’s commissions.” They could have taken the commissions. They said, “We’re going to hold the commissions until you get your license, and we’re going to let you … we’re going to help teach you and guide you on how to run that business.”

Roger Short:
Wow.

Marlin Faulkner:
Now, listen. I’d only been home about two, three weeks before I went to this conference. I’m texting my wife, “Babe, this lady lost her husband, and they’re going to help her out. They’re going to take care of her.” See, culture eats talent for breakfast. And my wife texted back, “Good. I hope you don’t die.” No, I’m just teasing. She didn’t say that, but she probably wanted to. I’d only been home three weeks.

Marlin Faulkner:
But what I saw was I saw a company that cared more about people than they did about money. What I saw was a company that cared more about lives than they did about where they were ranked and as far as best companies. The next thing that happened, and this just happened. I talked about this at S.W.A.T. I have an agent, Anna Burton. She texted me on March 25, because I was speaking at Symmetry’s national conference, that she’d just had her baby. And the Friday, two Fridays ago, I was at the S.W.A.T. financial event, and I got a text from her. Before I went downstairs for breakfast, she said, “I need you to call me.” She said, “My baby just died.”

Marlin Faulkner:
And to hear a mother cry over losing a baby is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to live through. And what I saw from our team, because she’s a part of my own team, our team rallied around here. And I called the owner from Symmetry and said, “Hey, this is what’s happened. We just want to let the company know. We’re going to try to raise money,” because they didn’t have enough time to put insurance in place on the baby. They were going to. To date, right now, we’ve raised over $8,000 for her just so she didn’t have to pay for her baby’s funeral.

Marlin Faulkner:
The remorse we heard … money’s not everything, but at least in that moment when we’re at the funeral, we can hand her that check and say, “Here’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.” And so, when I say culture, we just have a positive culture that we promote growth to everybody. And so, to have an agency that’s going to do seven figures, you have to have a really healthy culture. I didn’t understand that, Roger. When I got into insurance, I thought, “Let’s just sell policies, go make a lot of money, and we’ll grow. And we’ll be rolling around in money, this will be …” That’s not the case.

Marlin Faulkner:
I’ve seen people come in here that are great producers that weren’t really ethical, and they didn’t really care about people. They didn’t make it in this culture. It doesn’t mean they couldn’t make it somewhere else. They just didn’t make it in this culture. And we’ve got people that they want to make a lot of money, but they care about people, and they care about the lives of other people. They care about making an impact in America and in changing the world we live in. They do great here.

Marlin Faulkner:
I mean, I’ve got a lady right now. She was a principal of a private school, a Christian private school, never got insurance before. She’s only been here six months, and she wrote close to $40,000 last month. You know the number one reason she’s here? She says, “I got on a call, and I love the culture.”

Marlin Faulkner:
I think number one, I think because everything is not for everybody, you got to find what you want. You got to find what fits best with you. But we know number one, before anything else matters, we know that people matter the most, and people come first.

Roger Short:
That’s very-

Roger Short:
[crosstalk 00:39:21]

Marlin Faulkner:
For us, we believe in culture.

Roger Short:
So for agents out there, you need to be connected to an organization that offers that culture, that has the culture. If you are it, you have to create that culture, and it’s hard to do on your own. It’s very hard to do on your own. That’s why there’s so many people with these big contracts, and they never build a team. They never have an organization because they don’t have the support mechanisms, the culture, the family, the environment to attract people to. It’s them.

Roger Short:
I mean, the light is shining on them, and if the world doesn’t like what it sees, and they see you grinding, it lacks that opportunity for people to be a part of something bigger than an individual. And so I respect that. I respect that, man. You invite people in the culture. And, Marlin, I know from your personality and how you love on people … I just hung out with you that night across the street at that restaurant. I don’t know what it was, what that restaurant was across from the hotel venue there when you were there with Hayden, and Coach Burt walked in. And there was a whole bunch of other people there, and we were talking. I could tell by just how you were interacting with people and how you were loving on people, and how you were smiling, and how you were encouraging people, you’re one of the key factors of that culture. So I respect that, and that’s why you’re even on the podcast with us today because I wanted people to hear that in you. What’s number two, man? What’s the second key?

Marlin Faulkner:
I’ll say this. I created something. I don’t know if I said it or if I stole it from somebody, but I get to say it on here first. So I don’t think it’s mine, so I don’t really care. But I heard one time it’s ROI, return on impact. And I coined that because I always want to return on what I’m doing. So what I’m doing has to be great, and it has to be good because the returns always come back to you. And I really believe in reaping and sowing. And so, I want to put out goodness so I get goodness back. I want to put out love so I get love back. I want to put out good energy so I get energy back.

Marlin Faulkner:
And so, I will always want to have an ROI. I will always want a return on impact. And I think culture is the number one way to do that with people because-

Roger Short:
Beautiful.

Marlin Faulkner:
… let’s face it. We’re all living life. You don’t know where someone’s at when they come into your business. Right?

Roger Short:
No. Mm-mm (negative).

Marlin Faulkner:
Everyone tells you they’re feeling good about life or they’re wanting a new opportunity, but we know that’s not true. We know life gets in the way. And, Chris, for me, return on impact is what drives culture for our team, and we’ve got some phenomenal people.

Marlin Faulkner:
Number two, duplication and scalability. I’ve been a part of organizations. I’ve been in insurance companies where I saw individuals that were very high-functioning and made a lot of money, but not as much as they could have if they could figure out how to duplicate themselves. Here’s the problem I had most of my life. I was so busy trying to be somebody else that I didn’t know who I was. So how can you duplicate yourself when you even know who you are?

Marlin Faulkner:
And I see a lot of people not knowing who they are. So they go somewhere, and they just do what’s there. Well, when you have a culture like this that’s phenomenal, the reason that there’s been so much growth is it’s duplicatable. What Nate said to me, I can say to my agents. What Brad Smith told Nate Auffort, Nate can tell me, and I can tell my agents. What Edward Pritchett told Brad Smith, who told Nate Auffort that told me, I can tell my agents. You have to be able to duplicate it.

Marlin Faulkner:
The problem with most businesses … Think about this. If I wanted to go start my own business, I would have to come up with marketing costs. I would have to come up with staff. I would have to come up with leads if I stayed in this business. I would have to come up with trainings. I would have to come up with processes. That costs a lot of money.

Roger Short:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), and time.

Marlin Faulkner:
That costs a lot of money and time. And time is more valuable than money. And to be able to come in here, and they already had a duplicatable system, what that allowed me to do was that allowed me to run as fast as I could. The reason that I didn’t do that before was because I was never comfortable in the culture. It never felt safe. If you’re an agent and you don’t feel safe running as fast as you can, maybe you’re in the wrong culture. Or, like Roger said, maybe you need to create the right culture.

Marlin Faulkner:
I just knew that I was in a place where I couldn’t create that myself. I had to be loved on. And coming out of an abusive childhood, I got into a place where I was negligent to my wife and kids. So I was injured, and I needed to be healed. And what culture did was gave me a hospital. What duplication did was it gave me a track that I could run on as fast as I wanted.

Roger Short:
And it sounds like it gave you a cause. Right? It gave you a purpose and a message to share with people. That’s a powerful thing because you’re healing on one end, and you’re sharing that healing with other people.

Marlin Faulkner:
I always gave back. I believe that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. And so, if I heard something … I would start doing personal development. So here’s one of the keys. I’m not going to talk about this because some people believe this. Some people don’t. When I got started here, Edward Pritchett, my mentor’s mentor’s mentor, was making $50,000 a month. I was homeless and broke, and I’d just come in this business. I knew I couldn’t catch him if I didn’t read and watch audios and listen to audio because I couldn’t catch him.

Marlin Faulkner:
So to speed it up, I had to listen to more audios, read more books, listen to more audiobooks because I was so far behind. I was 37 years old, and I was broke, but I had time. That’s why time is so valuable, Roger. I would get up at 4:00 in the morning. I would listen to an audio. I would read. I would meditate, and I would listen to guys like Tony Robbins that says you’re the sum of your five closest friends. That’s your net worth.

Marlin Faulkner:
Remember, I was homeless. I didn’t really have any friends. So my friends became Eric Thomas, Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Earl Nightingale.

Roger Short:
T.D. Jakes-

Marlin Faulkner:
Jim-

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:45:39]

Roger Short:
All those people.

Marlin Faulkner:
T.D. Jakes, all these guys became my best friends because I was always listening to them in the morning in the car, on the way home, while I was sleeping. So I had to do my personal development. Why? Because I couldn’t catch the people in front of me thinking the same thoughts that I was thinking. Here’s my kind of 1A to culture because I came into the culture at the company that I did. They were a company that was doing personal development, so that became my cause. I couldn’t be, I wasn’t the number one recruiter. I wasn’t the number one producer. But what if I could become the number one personal develop guy?

Chris Ball:
Love it, dude.

Marlin Faulkner:
What if I could read more? What if I could do this more? Why on the duplication and scalability? Because there’s a bottleneck in every company. And I used to hate problems. I used to run from problems. One of my best friends is Brad Smith. He brought Nate Auffort into the business. He always tells me people get paid for the problems that they solve. He said the janitor in a company is solving a different problem than the CEO. Here’s the difference. You treat them both the same. You just realize they’re both solving different problems.

Marlin Faulkner:
What duplication does is it removes bottlenecks. Here’s the question you have to ask yourself. Here’s the question I ask myself. If what I’m doing today, if I can’t teach 100 people to do the exact same thing, I need to change.

Roger Short:
I’m taking notes. I’m taking notes, man. I’m taking notes.

Marlin Faulkner:
We all know good hamburger restaurants. Right? You were telling me about this place-

Roger Short:
Oh, that’s right.

Marlin Faulkner:
… Slinging Blades Pizza that’s unbelievable there. I can’t wait to get up there to Louisville. I’m coming, Louisville. Get ready for me.

Chris Ball:
That’s right.

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:47:23] fire. But listen, my wife probably makes some better pizza-

Chris Ball:
Oh, yeah.

Marlin Faulkner:
… than Slinging Blades.

Chris Ball:
Oh, yeah.

Marlin Faulkner:
But if she doesn’t have a duplicatable system, it’s just another pizza. If you’re a phenomenal agent and you can crush it, and you can recruit, or you can write business, if you’re in a system that’s not duplicatable, are you just another good agent? And that’s my fear. If you want to insult me, call me good. I don’t want to be good. I want to be phenomenal. I want to be the best at what I do. I want to be the best at everything that I do. And so if I can’t do that because I can’t duplicate myself, then how do you grow?

Marlin Faulkner:
I drove up to Chick-fil-A the owner day. The owner of Chick-fil-A, I don’t know if he’s passed away. I think his son owns the company now. He spoke at my college graduation, and I didn’t know what Chick-fil-A was. It wasn’t a big company then. Right now, I think I saw that they’re the number two QSR, quick service restaurant, in the world, and they’re only open six days a week. You know why? Because their culture and because they’re duplicatable.

Roger Short:
Truett Cathy, I think he passed away just a year or two ago.

Marlin Faulkner:
Truett Cathy, yes.

Roger Short:
Yeah.

Chris Ball:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Roger Short:
Yeah, phenomenal system, man. Phenomenal system. It’s probably the best.

Marlin Faulkner:
Phenomenal.

Roger Short:
Yeah, you go down the highway, or you get off an interstate, and you pull into any town where there’s Chick-fil-A, the lineup is like twice around, and they have people outside walking with the cars. And next door to it is an Arby’s with two guys out there having a smoke in the drive-through lane. Right? One’s got an unbelievable product and an unbelievable system. The other one, meh.

Marlin Faulkner:
We are not sponsored by Arby’s.

Roger Short:
We are not sponsored by either one. And I’m sorry if you’re an Arby’s owner and you’re getting into the insurance business, but that’s how I feel about those systems.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s right.

Roger Short:
Yes.

Marlin Faulkner:
And they both serve food, right?

Roger Short:
They both serve food.

Marlin Faulkner:
They’re both in the quick-service restaurant industry.

Roger Short:
Yes.

Chris Ball:
Yes.

Marlin Faulkner:
And one of them jumped from being around a long time and being average or being upwards, and the other one came out of nowhere, and they moved to number two. And they believe they’ll be number one in the next 10 years. Why? Because of their culture and because they’re duplicatable. I drove in one day, and they had made … They have the drive-through lane. They had other drive-through lanes with cones-

Roger Short:
Correct, yeah.

Marlin Faulkner:
So they had five lanes wide of drive-throughs.

Chris Ball:
Correct.

Roger Short:
You feel like you’re going down the interstate in Atlanta, Georgia, with 16 lanes. I mean, that’s what it’s like now at a Chick-fil-A. Duplication, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
Here’s the kicker. They’re reinventing what’s already been invented.

Roger Short:
Yeah, yeah.

Marlin Faulkner:
They just found a better way to solve the problem, and so that’s what duplication does. It allows you to solve a problem that allows the masses to be able to get in front of you. And it allows you to get in front of the masses. And so number two, I think, is you have to be duplicatable.

Marlin Faulkner:
When Nate told me that I need you to get me on the phone with 20 people in the next seven to 10 days, that was duplicatable. Because, Chris, you know what I said to my first agent, Derek Bach?

Chris Ball:
What was that?

Marlin Faulkner:
If you want to be successful here, do you want to do it five months from now, five weeks from now, five days from now-

Chris Ball:
Again, the-

Chris Ball:
[crosstalk 00:50:29]

Marlin Faulkner:
… five minutes from now.

Roger Short:
I need you to get me on the phone with 20 people in the next seven to 10 business days.

Marlin Faulkner:
I need you to get me on the phone. Here’s what it taught me. It taught me, number one, success goes fast. People that are successful are always moving. They’re always moving. They’re always doing something. And number two, it taught me not to doubt. Because I could have said why not 10. Why not this? Why not that? Why not this? I know this. I was homeless. I was a homeless guy that knew nothing. I just duplicated what he said.

Marlin Faulkner:
So, for those people that say you need to learn, you need to wait until you’re good to recruit, I didn’t. I recruited from day uno.

Chris Ball:
Day uno.

Marlin Faulkner:
My mentor … And what I did was we were some of the fastest at the top of the company. I think I made it to the top contract, and just at four years.

Roger Short:
Boom.

Marlin Faulkner:
In just four years.

Roger Short:
Great, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
I made it to the top of this company. And my first month, Nate Auffort did $50,000. I did $2,700, not because I’m good, because the system’s good.

Roger Short:
Yeah. All right, man. Let’s keep it rolling here.

Marlin Faulkner:
Sorry, I talk-

Roger Short:
You’re dropping some serious science, man. You are the professor today with those glasses, so let’s hear it.

Marlin Faulkner:
Listen, listen.

Roger Short:
We got three more things we’re going to give our people and we’re going to give our listeners. What is the third key to building these seven …

Roger Short:
To assist you in launching your insurance career, The Life Insurance Academy is now excited to announce a strategic partnership with XCEL Solutions. XCEL is the top provider for life, accident, and health insurance pre-license training. The preparing people to pass eLearning platform is loaded with rich content, including interactive assessments, engaging multimedia content, and customized learning paths, allowing you to grasp these sometimes difficult concepts based on your needs.

Roger Short:
So we’ve been partners now, and we’ve been promoting XCEL for at least four years. We’re students ourselves, and we’ve had a great user experience and a high pass rate. The product delivers to you exactly what you need to pass the test the first time, and that’s the key. So their prep review course and exam simulator teaches you exactly how to pass your state exam by sharing with you everything known to be on the test in a streamlined format. So through this exclusive sponsorship, Life Insurance Academy listeners and subscribers can now receive an amazing 50% discount.

Roger Short:
Yes, you heard it right. From the regular pre-licensing fee of $199 to only $99. So by utilizing a special discount code of L-I-A, that’s three simple letters, L-I-A, you can get the course for just 99 bucks. This exclusive discount is available for life, health, and accident courses or even a combination of these. You can go to Liapodcast.org/XCEL, and XCEL spells X-C-E-L. That’s Liapodcast.org. That’s our Life Insurance Academy podcast homepage.

Roger Short:
You can go liapodcast.org/XCEL. You can get it there. You can also find it on the Life Insurance Academy.org homepage in the upper right corner. So if you’re going to be launching a career in insurance, or if you know anyone who is and you want to ensure the highest pass rate the first time, send them this code L-I-A, receive this exclusive discount. Get the code, get licensed, and launch your career.

Roger Short:
What is the third key to building a seven-figure agency?

Marlin Faulkner:
You got to have good training. Here’s what most people … so we live in a technological … I can’t say it. We have a lot of technology.

Chris Ball:
There you go.

Roger Short:
There you go. You said it

Chris Ball:
That worked. We’ll edit that other part out.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, I’m always overcoming problems. You got to be able to train your people. Here’s what I love. When I was with another company, and they sent me away for the weekend, and they did a training where they never let us role play. They just talked at you for two days. I really didn’t learn anything.

Chris Ball:
We hear that a lot.

Marlin Faulkner:
It was no wonder I didn’t have success. And when I came here, Nate Auffort, and Brad Smith, and Matt Smith put together this system where we called it the 10 steps. So if I had a brand-new agent call me and say, “Hey, I’m stuck at this. What do I do?” I’d say, “Go to step number four.” Because if I carry … Brian Delaney, one of my best buds in the world, he told me this quote. He said, “If I carry you on my back, my legs get stronger. Your legs get weaker.”

Marlin Faulkner:
And that’s what I did. And so what we did was what Nate offered and Matt Smith did was they created a system called 10 Steps that we had audios and videos on how to enroll in the business, how to buy leads, how to recruit, how to write your first piece of business, how to write an application, how to submit your app, how to check your pending business, how to call your clients back. We had 10 steps, and I can learn at my own pace.

Marlin Faulkner:
And what would happen is I would call Nate Auffort and say, “Well, what about this? What about that?” He said, “Didn’t you watch the video on step number four?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Well, go back and watch it, and call me when you’re done.” And he forced me to stop jumping on his back every time I wanted a piggyback ride. He taught me to get stronger. He taught me to learn more. He taught me that when I learned it myself, it’s in there forever. When I hear it from someone else, it’s in there, but my subconscious doesn’t have it yet.

Roger Short:
Correct, yes.

Marlin Faulkner:
And that’s what you want it, in your subconscious. Training is important. So we have audios. We have videos. We have scripts that any agent can, at any point in their career, go to and refer from. What does this do? This allows me to go to number four, and this allows me to have good conversations. This is the big one.

Marlin Faulkner:
I’ll end with these last two. This is big. Here’s why. Most people, if they call up insurance … If you’re doing interviews like this, I just do them different. I was taught by Brad Smith and by Edward Pritchett to do it … We do them different. When you allow people to train on their own, and they’re growing, here’s the two things that I remember. Number one, I don’t manage people, I mentor movement.

Roger Short:
I love that line.

Marlin Faulkner:
I’ll say it again. I don’t manage people, I mentor movements. So if I give you a task and you call me back and you haven’t completed that task, I’m just duplicating what my mentor did to me. If I hadn’t watched the video, he said, “Well call me back when you watch it. I got to go. I’m busy.” You teach people how to treat you. What that taught me was go do the work yourself.

Marlin Faulkner:
Number two, I got to have different conversations. I guarantee you most conversations, if people are trying to get into insurance companies, when they talk to the person, the interviewer on the other line, they’re telling them the same thing. We can give you a good contract. Well, we’ve got leads. We can give you this. We can give you that. What do you want? Those are the conversations they’re having.

Marlin Faulkner:
Here’s what’s different if you have a training system that allows people to … and we do trainings. We do live trainings. We do webinars. But the brunt of it, we want people to learn on their own. Why? Because they got to have a dog in the fight. The conversations I have with people because I learned from my other mentor, Brad Smith, is what do you want out of life? What do you see yourself in five years? Chris, I can just feel … Imagine how it’s going to feel when you hit the top of this company, and you’re making $100,000 a month. What’s your wife going to think about you?

Chris Ball:
Yeah, that’s planting some stuff, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
How are your kids going to look at you? See, the conversations I have now are different. It’s not about who you are. Because again, remember, you can become more. It’s about what do you want out of this thing called life? And what that does was that takes me back to … See, this is cylindrical or cylifrical. That takes me-

Roger Short:
Trifical?

Marlin Faulkner:
… back to a good culture.

Chris Ball:
Centrifugal?

Marlin Faulkner:
Centrifugal, thank you.

Roger Short:
That’s one of those words.

Chris Ball:
Circular? Circular?

Marlin Faulkner:
You have to be smart to … circular. It’s a circle.

Roger Short:
Circular.

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 00:59:01]

Roger Short:
No, you don’t have to be smart to make a lot of money.

Marlin Faulkner:
I’m making a circle.

Roger Short:
You have to be smart, but you don’t need to have great vocabulary.

Marlin Faulkner:
You don’t have to be smart to make a lot of money. You’ve got to-

Roger Short:
I know that.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s right. You’ve got to surround yourself with smart people. But that takes me back to a good culture because now I’m saying, “Hey, I know I just hired you, but I’d love to get on the phone with your wife because I want to meet her. I want to hear what her dreams are for you. Hey, how many kids do you have? What are your kids’ names?” The conversations are different when I don’t have to train you all the time and tell you what to do and tell you how to do it. I expect you to do that on your own. The expectations are huge, but I can have different conversations.

Marlin Faulkner:
Roger, what’s it going to feel like when you’re on vacation with your wife? See, because Roger, I’d never taken my wife on vacation until I got to Symmetry Financial. I’d never taken her on vacation. In 2019, we went on 10 vacations. Six of them were paid for by companies. And I’ll never forget my first vacation. We went to Dorado Beach. My mentor of all mentors, Edward Pritchett, bought a house there. He’s a Puerto Rican. And we went there the first time, and we walked into this room. Man, I’d never given my wife anything to be proud of me for. I’d never in my life.

Marlin Faulkner:
I’ll never forget what Brad Smith asked me. “Imagine what it’s going to feel like when you can take your wife for a vacation that’s paid for.” We walked in the room at Dorado Beach, and my wife just looked at me, and she told me she loved me. I wouldn’t trade that moment for a million dollars. I remembered back to the conversation when Brad asked me, “Imagine how it’s going to feel if you’ve never been on a vacation where you didn’t have to pay for anything.” I’m telling you, it feels incredible. I can’t explain to you what it feels like. But that’s what I was fighting for.

Marlin Faulkner:
The money was good, but I was fighting to take my wife on a vacation. I was fighting to be able to take my kids to Disney World. I was fighting to be able to take my kids to Puerto Rico like we did two years ago. I was fighting to take my kids to D.C. That’s what I was fighting for. I didn’t care about the company. I didn’t care about contract level. I didn’t care. I cared about my wife and kids. That’s what I care about. That’s why I wanted to win. And so when I’m talking to a brand new agent, I want to know what they want out of this thing called life. That’s what I want to help them get because when I hire someone, they don’t work for me. I work for them. See, I tell them, “I work for you. I want to find out what it is you want. And my job is to help you get it.” That’s what I do for my agents. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get emotional.

Roger Short:
Man, this is the real stuff. We didn’t want the fake. We didn’t want the fake Marlin. We want the real Marlin.

Chris Ball:
No joke, man. Yeah, that’s life to life, brother.

Roger Short:
That’s strong, man. I love that idea, Marlin, having conversations. And you listed it as a big one. You don’t manage people, you mentor movement. You get to have different conversations with people. Let them get a dog in the fight, you said. Have different conversations. Your conversations are not about what they do, but your conversations are about who they want to become and how it’s going to feel when they get there. And it’s not about telling them all the time about how to fix the problem. It’s about who they want to become in the journey of learning how to fix their own problem using the system and leaning into you guys to do that.

Roger Short:
I mean, that’s powerful stuff right there. That’s strong. We could end right there, but I know you’ve got one more. I know you got one more, and I think you left the best one for last. And most people, I think, miss it. We talked a little bit about it, and I know you feel super strong about this. When it comes to building an agency, doing something that’s bigger than yourself, it’s going to require this. So what do you got here for us?

Marlin Faulkner:
It’s the biggest one. This is the best-kept secret. Most people don’t know this. I had to call my mentor right before I called you and asked him, “Hey, Nate, can I talk about this? I know that there’s a lot of things that we do different than other people.” Listen, you don’t have to do anything about what we said. This is just the success that we’ve had. I have 11 agency owners. I’ve helped 11 people get the contracts where they’re making really healthy passive income. And so, this is the last one.

Marlin Faulkner:
You have to be able to edify someone other than yourself. The way I say it is this: the secret sauce is, you got to be the zero before you can be the hero. Your job is to zero support everybody to the hero. And the hero points everyone back to you. And as you follow the hero, you’ll … I turned around one day, and I looked up, and I stopped being a zero, and I became the hero. Edification is something that most people don’t do because everyone wants to talk about themselves.

Roger Short:
Can we define what that is because we’re using a word now that’s probably not very common, edification? Can you talk about that?

Marlin Faulkner:
Yeah, I’ll give you an example of it.

Roger Short:
What does that mean?

Marlin Faulkner:
Edification means I’m going to lift up or I’m going to give the credit where credit is due.

Chris Ball:
Perfect way of saying that.

Marlin Faulkner:
You understand I’m just a homeless guy that followed some directions. There’s nothing great about me except that I was created to be great. But someone had to show me that that was inside of me. So when I tell somebody … Here are the most three powerful stories. If you’re recruiting and you want to build a team, I always recruit telling number one. I always tell my mentor’s story. I’m either talking about Nate Auffort, or Brad Smith, Matt Smith, Edward Pritchett, or the owners of the company, Brandon Ellison. I’m always telling someone else’s story because it’s not attractive to talk about yourself. I always tell me-

Roger Short:
Even if you’re having massive success, it’s not attractive?

Marlin Faulkner:
It’s not. It’s not attractive. People want to know that they can duplicate it. Here’s the three things people are asking. You better be taking lots of notes. Number one, they’re asking, “Does this work?” That’s what everybody you interview, everybody that wants to come into your business, that’s what they’re asking. Number two, “Can I do this? Is there room in there for me?” And the real question, the reason we focus on conversation so much, is because they’re really asking, “Can I trust you? Can I trust you with my wife, with my kids, with my bills?”

Marlin Faulkner:
Chris, people have been hurt in America. They’re running for this American dream. It’s become an American nightmare, and there are few people who find it. Cody Askins has a thing called 8% Nation. 8% of insurance agents will make it. 92% will quit. There’s not very many of us. Right? So the difference is, I’m always telling my mentor’s story because I don’t have a story when I got started. This is how you can recruit from day one. I’m going to tell the secret. You tell your mentor’s story. He knows all the answers. When you get better, you start to tell them your story a little bit. I followed a guy. I got good enough to do this.

Marlin Faulkner:
And the third thing people want here is your people story. Who have you helped? Who are you following? How did it affect your life? Who’s following you? That’s the secret sauce-

Chris Ball:
Very good, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
… because most people won’t do that. So I never want the … you guys realize the more you talk about yourself, the bigger the target is on your back. People are waiting for you to fail. As soon as you do, I knew it. Nate Auffort did $50,000 his first month. I did $2,000. I want to get you on the phone with my mentor. Let’s do it real quick. He dials him. “Well, what did you do? Well, I’m just getting started.” The best time to recruit is when you’re getting started.

Roger Short:
Oh, you don’t have to be good to recruit?

Marlin Faulkner:
No, you shouldn’t be good because here’s what happens-

Roger Short:
You just have to point to someone else who is.

Marlin Faulkner:
Nate Auffort said you got to be a good traffic cop. You ever been to a football game?

Chris Ball:
That’s a great way of saying it.

Marlin Faulkner:
I know Kentucky is not known for their football. Oklahoma is, but I’m coming to Kentucky. I’m coming, baby.

Roger Short:
Do you want to talk basketball?

Marlin Faulkner:
We’re going to a football game.

Roger Short:
You want to talk basketball? You want to talk basketball?

Marlin Faulkner:
I’m a football guy.

Roger Short:
We can talk some sports.

Marlin Faulkner:
I’m a football guy. I don’t know what to talk about. My wife’s a basketball player. I’m the football guy. But when you go to the game, and you want cheap parking, you got to go to these parking lots. And they got someone standing there pointing you where to park. That’s all I became. I love speaking. I love motivating. But all I did was follow the guy who was following someone else. And all I’m asking the people to do is follow me.

Roger Short:
That is-

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s what-

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 01:07:57]

Roger Short:
Go ahead.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s what people are wanting to know.

Roger Short:
Do you have a follow-up question because I got a whole bunch of questions around that?

Chris Ball:
No, you go ahead. I just love that statement, and it’s not done enough in our culture. It’s not appreciated enough in our culture, the idea of giving credit where credit is due. It’s almost like we absorb credit. And movements die as a result of it. It just ends when it becomes us, and it becomes a part of ourselves.

Roger Short:
On a practical level, Marlin, can you break down what that looks like? I know that those are big ideas, but in a practical sense, if you’re trying to build a business, how can you leverage this concept of telling your mentor story, giving credit? You’re inviting someone new into the business. You’re trying to show them the business. How does this idea of the best-kept secret in the world, edification of someone else, how does it play out in practical terms? And what happens as a result of edification given?

Marlin Faulkner:
The best thing about it is whenever I edify the right people, and Nate Auffort or Brad Smith, they edify me back. So now, a new person doesn’t know who the greater is. I’m pointing to him, and he’s pointing to me. You know what they’re saying? I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of a company where people just … no one’s taking credit. They’re giving it away.

Marlin Faulkner:
What the practical part of that is, people are drawn to movements. This is not an insurance company. This is a movement to create people who love people, to get a return on impact. So the practical part of it is when you do it, you draw so much attention that you’re not even aware because people really begin to watch. Here’s-

Roger Short:
By giving attention away from yourself, you draw attention to the movement, which is attractive. But by trying to draw attention to yourself, you repel people-

Chris Ball:
That’s powerful, man.

Roger Short:
… away from the movement, which is unattractive.

Marlin Faulkner:
It’s unattractive.

Roger Short:
It’s counterintuitive to what most people are trying to do in the world.

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s exactly right because what the world says is a different story, but I’m just telling you what I’ve lived. I was a homeless guy, and I’m six, seven figures. I was homeless. I don’t know if that could work for you. I know what I followed. I followed-

Chris Ball:
You said this so many times. I mean, even how you’re even saying it now. I mean, it’s clear that this is part of your DNA. It’s a powerful messaging tool, for sure.

Marlin Faulkner:
Well, here’s why, because I got a second chance at life. I wonder how many people out there are driving in their cars, listening on the radio, listening on the podcast, watching this podcast, that are really thinking deep in their mind, “Man, I need a second chance. If I just had one more chance.” So when I got here, my thoughts couldn’t be my own. My thoughts couldn’t be my own. My thoughts got me broke. If you want to follow Marlin, my thoughts will get you homeless.

Marlin Faulkner:
Chris, if you want to be homeless, come follow me. I know how to do that. Those are my thoughts. I know how to ruin marriages. I know how to be a horrible dad. But I had to learn all the other stuff that wasn’t me and that weren’t my thoughts. They were other people’s thoughts that were having success. Listen, ask my wife if it’s better that I took someone else’s thoughts. Ask my kids. Ask my son that he walked out to his 16th birthday, and I took them to the car lot. And we showed him this car that was probably worth $1,000. It was beat up and bad, and we told him he was going to get that. Then we went home, and he went in the house and came outside, and he had a 2003 Hummer, black because that was his dream car, with a red bow on it. Ask him if it matters if you talk about yourself or if you talk about other people.

Marlin Faulkner:
When you’re really confident, you don’t need the credit. I don’t need the credit. I got everything wrapped up in a wife and kids and friends who love me now. I definitely don’t need credit from strangers. There are enough haters out there that are going to hate. It doesn’t bother me, but I want to make a return on impact.

Roger Short:
Marlin, I know you said, “I was homeless. I was homeless.” And most of the people that are getting shown the insurance business are not homeless. Right? They will have maybe a misfortune, or they found themselves trying to do something, and it didn’t work out. They’re changing careers. Some people have had some moderate levels of success. You just said you attracted a principal of a private Christian school. I know that there’s other people that are in the business that we met last weekend that are dentists, and their dental assistant who actually runs their office is the upline manager in the insurance business. And now the dentists are in the business with them, actually helping people put insurance in place and showing the business plan because they love the culture. They’ve been attracted to the movement. Right?

Roger Short:
We got to meet these people. And so, when people come in with some moderate levels of success, sometimes it’s easy to say, “Just do what I do.” And I think that’s a big pitfall that most people can get into. And I think that’s where this idea is that you have to become good first before you can attract somebody because they’re going to be looking at me.

Roger Short:
But the power in your story is, you always say, “Don’t look at me. Look at the system and the pathway that’s been created, and let’s do this together.” And when you do that, and you give that edification and that credit where credit is due, those people appropriately give it right back to you, which makes you look like a superstar. And it was never trying to draw the attention to yourself.

Marlin Faulkner:
I was never trying to draw attention to myself.

Roger Short:
Man, that is the best-kept secret in the world.

Marlin Faulkner:
The best-kept. Most people will hear this, and they won’t do it. I can tell that because most people aren’t going to do it. They think it’s hogwash. Listen, this month, I’m on a mission to recruit 100 agents direct to me this month. That’s my mission this month. Listen, I write my goals down every day. That’s what billionaires do. I write down my affirmations. My first affirmation is I am successful because I write down my affirmations daily. It’s not about me, but I can show you can have what you want. Here. It’s not about look at me and see what I’ve done. Look where I’ve been. You’re probably better than me. You probably could have more than I have. You probably become more than I become.

Marlin Faulkner:
You know what? Imagine how it’s going to feel when you don’t have to go driving around looking for gas prices. Right? An agent asked me the other day, “Can you believe how much gas is going up?” And I laughed out loud. I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” This is from a guy who would drive 30 minutes out of the way to go get gas because it was two cents cheaper. This is for a guy who never filled his car all the way up for seven years. That’s who I’m talking to right now. I laughed out loud because I said, “I don’t remember the last time I looked at a gas price because it’s not about me.” I’m helping other people win. I had someone helped me. Why would I not give back?

Roger Short:
Marlin, when you got on stage, you gave two or three different talks, actually. I was taking notes the whole time I was there. I know you said you were taking notes when I spoke, and I was taking notes when you spoke. And we’re like, “I got to get to know that guy.” Because I’m attracted to people who want to make an impact, and we wear it. Be a difference-maker, the challenge to be one. Look what he’s got on there, Chris.

Chris Ball:
Oh, look at that. Nice.

Roger Short:
Check that out.

Marlin Faulkner:
Be one, baby, be one.

Roger Short:
[crosstalk 01:15:42] the difference-maker.

Marlin Faulkner:
Every day.

Chris Ball:
I love it.

Roger Short:
And I’m attracted to people who want to do that. And I saw you, and every time you got on stage, you edified and spoke about the opportunity that was extended to you and how grateful you were, and how forever in debt you would be to the man who was hosting the event. And yet, you have so many of the success principles that you know that could rattle off. And you could do your own events, and you already do your own events. And yet, the whole time you were there, you gave that away. You gave those principles, and you gave that credit where credit was due.

Roger Short:
And it’s a powerfully attractive thing to get around people who are humble enough to point. It does create that movement, man. And so, that’s what drew me to you, to help you. And you stood on stage, and then you said this: “And I’m going to put my goals out there. I believe in short-term targets, and I want to recruit. I’m going to add 100 new agents to our agency this month, in the month of May.” And because of that attractiveness, and because of your audacity … audacity, that’s Les Brown. I mean, he uses that word over and over again if you ever listen to him. The audacity!

Marlin Faulkner:
He does.

Roger Short:
Right? If you listen to Les Brown, that’s one of his words. The audacity to put your short-term goal out there to make yourself accountable to hundreds and hundreds of people that were not only in the room but people who heard it last week in our podcast because I mentioned it last week. And then you had agents calling you up and saying, “Hey, I heard your name mentioned on a podcast somewhere.” And you’re like, “I got to get on this podcast.” And it attracted me to you to say, “We got to help Marlin hit his goal. We got to help Marlin hit his goal, to tell your story, to push that story further.” Because there’s a lot of people who may not be homeless, but they are hopeless.

Marlin Faulkner:
Yes.

Roger Short:
And your physical state and where you’re sleeping at night does not predetermine your mental or emotional state. And inside all of us, there’s another gear. There’s a calling for greatness. And I believe anybody listening all the way through to this podcast, or if you’ve watched these videos in sequence to get to this one, you know that deep inside of you, there’s an opportunity. And there’s a knock, there’s a knock, and it’s a hollow knock. And you hear that knocking, and there’s an opportunity.

Roger Short:
And you guys need to reach out. There’s greater things to be had. So if you’re in an organization and they’re encouraging you to grow, lean into that. Lean into the good relationships in that group that you’re with, and say, “How can I contribute? How can I contribute?” If you’re out there and you’re listening to this for the first time, I’m going to recommend you call this guy up and say, “Hey, what can you do? What can you do to help me become hopeful instead of hopeless? Man, powerful.

Chris Ball:
[crosstalk 01:18:23] And one thing I want to say in regards to this, as far as this edification thing, maybe it’s new to you. Maybe you’ve never done it, and-

Roger Short:
Maybe it’s not in your family culture. Maybe it’s just something that it’s just not been a part of anything you’ve been part of here.

Chris Ball:
Here’s a good practice. Here’s something you can do. Make a list of people who’ve had an impact on your life, a small impact. Maybe it’s a small impact.

Roger Short:
That they’ve had an impact on your life?

Chris Ball:
Yeah, yeah. And call them and say thank you. Maybe that’s the spark. That’s the start of this to where you can start getting comfortable and starting to see the movements of a good God who puts people in your life, who you’re ultimately edifying and thanking, and start to move through the people who have spoken into you. And you can start to see hope of, man, there’s been some great stuff that’s happening. Maybe I’m not so hopeful right now, but maybe some great stuff that’s happened to bring me to a point where I can say thank you. Thank you for life.

Roger Short:
Man, it’s powerful, powerful.

Marlin Faulkner:
I want to say thank you to you guys. Meeting you, Chris, and you, Roger, every time I was around, you were always smiling. And I thought, “How come I don’t know these men? How come I don’t? I want to get to know them,” not to be on a podcast. The podcast is unbelievable. This is awesome. I didn’t even know you guys did a podcast until I saw it, and I-

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 01:19:37]

Roger Short:
Oh, this old thing?

Marlin Faulkner:
Now I’m on it. But you guys are unbelievable. Just the culture that you’ve created around this Life Insurance Academy and what you guys are doing. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Who doesn’t want to be a part of that? Who doesn’t? You’ve got a subscriber for life in me. But more than that, how can I help you guys?

Marlin Faulkner:
And I want to give you one more secret, and this is not to building a seven-figure business. This is just to being the person you were created to be. This is my only secret. Albert Einstein said … it’s one of his most famous quotes. He said, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” And if you’re listening right now, and you’re in a place of hopelessness, or you’re not where you want to be, or you’re trying to get to the next level, and you can’t see how. I’m going to ask you to do something that I ask my kids to do every morning now. I ask my wife to do it. I ask my agents to do it. I’m going to ask you to dream. I’m going to ask you to dream big.

Marlin Faulkner:
Albert Einstein, one of the smartest men who ever walked the Earth, said imagination is more powerful than knowledge. And yet, we get somewhere, and we want to show people how much we know. I don’t want to show people how much I know. I want to show them how big I dream. I wake up dreaming. I go to work dreaming. I eat lunch dreaming. I talk to agents dreaming. I call my wife in the middle of the day, dreaming. I eat dinner dreaming. I play basketball with my kids, dreaming. I go to bed dreaming. I’m always dreaming because dreaming is more powerful than knowledge.

Marlin Faulkner:
And maybe the one thing that you need to do, and like I had to do, was I had to stop being so realistic. And I had to say, “You know what? If I can dream it, I can have it.” Coach Burt taught me, you’ve got to go there before you can go there. You got to go there in your mind before you go there in the physical.

Marlin Faulkner:
Napoleon Hill says in thinking, you grow rich. Wherever the mind of man can conceive and believe, he can achieve. See, I realized if I started dreaming, when I got out from being homeless, when I finally laid my head on a pillow, I laid awake all night, but I was dreaming. And I tell people now, “I don’t dream. I don’t live my dreams. My dreams live me.” I don’t know if I’m dreaming right now or not, but I thought of this. I thought when I met Roger that I’m going to be on a podcast. And when I met Chris, I started dreaming it, and it happened.

Marlin Faulkner:
I didn’t call you. You called me. But I wanted to be close to you. I was attracted to you. So all I’m asking people to do is you can have a good culture, and you can do good trainings. And you can come up on edification. You can have good conversations. But I’m telling you if you want to be the person you were created to be, you got to dream. Don’t stop dreaming.

Marlin Faulkner:
The problem with Marlin Faulkner, 37 years of his life, is I would dream for a day, or a week, or even a month, and I would give up on that dream. It got too painful. I’m going to ask you to do one thing. I’m going to ask you to ignore the pain and just to keep dreaming. If you don’t listen to one thing I say … I was just a homeless guy that’s living his dreams now. All I’m going to do is ask you to dream.

Roger Short:
It’ll be exciting to hear the stories of those new people coming to your business because of that passion this month. And two years from now, have them walk on a stage and say, “Hey, someone reached into my life and shared an opportunity of a dream and hope, and gave me, going from hopeless to hopeful. And this is a result. And you’re having them at your house for your mastermind party, and we’ll be there. And we’ll be there. So here’s a cool announcement, everybody. Here’s a cool announcement. We’re going to be offering a special training with Mr. Marlin Faulkner. The date is going to be released.

Chris Ball:
It’s happening.

Roger Short:
We’re going to have it, and Marlin is coming to Louisville, Kentucky. And we are going to announce the date here in the next week or so. We’re going to lock that down. And anybody that wants to be a part of that live, you need to make the trek in. But we’ll also be making it available virtual so you can join. And we’re going to put this guy, and we’re going to turn him loose on a bunch of agents, and they’re not going to know what hit them. They’re not going to know what hit them. And I bet … I’m pretty confident. I’ll lay down my house on this, Chris.

Chris Ball:
Okay.

Roger Short:
I’ll bet you my house.

Chris Ball:
All right.

Roger Short:
I bet you he’s going to say the name Nate Auffort during that training.

Chris Ball:
Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m not willing to take that bet. I’m not willing.

Roger Short:
What do you mean, Chris? We can bet houses.

Chris Ball:
Okay. Here. I bet the world’s going to turn in the next 10 minutes. How’s that? Let’s be some things that are obvious.

Roger Short:
That’s about as sure as Marlin is going to talk about and edify his upline is that we know the world is going to turn. It’s not going to stop. Brother, what a pleasure having you on the podcast today. Man, what an absolute pleasure. We, here at the Life Insurance Academy, we believe everyone deserves a good coaching team that can help them win. With the right training, resources, and knowledge, and culture, and environment you can be successful. We have that available to you across all platforms. Connect with us at the lifeinsuranceacademy.org. Hit us up on social at lifeinsuracad. Marlin is now a follower on our social medias. He’s a follower on our social medias now.

Chris Ball:
That’s right.

Roger Short:
And, Marlin, you know what the cool thing is? While we’re doing this podcast, guess who rang my phone? I saw the call come up on my phone. Guess who called?

Marlin Faulkner:
Who was it?

Roger Short:
Guess who called to-

Marlin Faulkner:
Nate Auffort?

Roger Short:
… check in to see see how it went with you. It was Nate Auffort checking in. Isn’t that cool? Isn’t that cool?

Marlin Faulkner:
That’s my buddy, man.

Roger Short:
That’s cool. That’s a great relationship you guys got right there, man.

Marlin Faulkner:
If people don’t know about it, S.W.A.T., September 23rd through the 25th. It’s getting better and better and better. He’s learning and growing. And I got to meet you guys because of him. What kind of boring life would I be living if I didn’t give back, if I didn’t meet you guys? I get to go to Kentucky for the first time in my life. I just love you guys. Thank you so much for the vision you have to change this industry and change this world. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Marlin Faulkner:
I was talking about you with my wife the other day and just how excited. She was mad because she goes, “I don’t get to come to Louisville?” “Not yet, babe. Not yet.”

Roger Short:
She could come. You can bring her.

Marlin Faulkner:
We got kids in sports-

Roger Short:
She could come.

Marlin Faulkner:
… and she’s just busy. Best mom in the world, the best wife in the world. But Roger and Chris, thank you guys for what you do, man. I didn’t even know you existed. And now, I don’t think I can ever forget you.

Marlin Faulkner:
[crosstalk 01:26:13]

Roger Short:
It’s all about connections and getting connected with people who believe the same things you do, man. So the S.W.A.T. event is coming up. The dates on that again is 23rd to the 25th of December. It’s in Dallas, Texas.

Chris Ball:
I think it’s September.

Marlin Faulkner:
September.

Roger Short:
I said December. That was that was a-

Chris Ball:
That’s the special Christmas show.

Roger Short:
Yeah, that’s the special Christmas show.

Marlin Faulkner:
The 25th of December is Christmas. Roger, I don’t know if you know that.

Roger Short:
Correct, correct. September. September.

Chris Ball:
He’s Canadian. It happens.

Roger Short:
That was my dyslexia and all the other -exias that popped out there.

Chris Ball:
He’s Canadiexian.

Roger Short:
And so, that’s coming up. There’ll be links on that. We’re going to be promoting that event too. We’ll be back in Dallas for that event, so we’re going to be recommending and promoting people to come. So if you’re listening to this podcast, we need to get you hooked up on the next SWAT event coming up in Dallas in September. Marlin, we’re going to release that date soon. We’ll have you here in Kentucky. We cannot wait for that event.

Chris Ball:
Cannot wait, man.

Roger Short:
Man, here’s what Austin … Austin’s right over here going, “Is this podcast ever going to end?” You’re probably going to have the record for the longest podcast. And Austin, no cuts. No cuts on this podcast.

Chris Ball:
He’s sweating. Sweat is-

Roger Short:
No cuts on this one.

Chris Ball:
He’s beading up right now.

Roger Short:
We’re going to let it roll. It’s going to be a long one because it’s going to be a good one.

Chris Ball:
But it is so strong.

Roger Short:
Now the video, we will make those videos work. But the audio, man, we’re just going … it’s awesome. Thank you so much, Marlin, for being here.

Chris Ball:
Yes, absolutely.

Roger Short:
Appreciate your time. I know how valuable it is. We are grateful for-

Chris Ball:
Thank you so much.

Roger Short:
… your contribution and pouring into our listeners and the agents that work with us on the agency side, and all the people out there in Life Insurance Academy land all over the world. Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Have a great day.

Marlin Faulkner:
Thank you.

Chris Ball:
Thanks a lot, brother.

Roger Short:
[crosstalk 01:27:43] to be blessed. All right, take care.

Chris Ball:
See you.

Roger Short:
Bye-bye.

Austin L.:
That’s a wrap for today’s episode. As always, thanks so much for listening to Life Insurance Academy Podcasts. If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure to subscribe wherever you’re listening. Rate us five stars, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @lifeinsureacad. We also have our YouTube channel. Subscribe on that YouTube channel, Life Insurance Academy, and you’ll get all of our new videos, including the video version of this podcast and new training videos. The Life Insurance Academy Podcast is hosted, edited, and mixed by me, Austin Lopesilvero. This episode was produced by Roger Short, Chris Ball, Zach McElwain, and myself. Our theme song is by Flashing Lights. We’ll catch you in another episode. Until then, stay safe, and go be a difference-maker.