MILLION-DOLLAR AGENCY
In June, Lewis B. reached his goal of becoming a million-dollar agency. He works hard at his goals and always strives to turn them into a reality. Lewis B. expresses that to be successful and achieve your goals, you have to start somewhere. He says, “First of all, I got started. That’s really important. A lot of folks, managers and agents, they’re waiting to get started. The most important thing is that I got started, and when I got started, I never got ‘un-started.’ One of the challenges that people have in this business is that they stop, start, stop, start.” Lewis believes that you have to stick with the process and not quit in order to be successful. He also talks about how important it is to share your business with others by recruiting. “What I did pretty early in my career is that I started sharing this business with other people. I believe that this was the cure to my financial emptiness. I believe that this final expense business was my cure, and I believe it was a cure for other people as well.” Lewis states that it’s important to realize that you determine your own success. “I share this business with dozens and dozens of people on a monthly basis, and I really didn’t care who got in, who called me crazy, who told me I should never contact them again. I never worried about that. I knew this was a numbers game, and I knew whoever talked to the most people make the most money.”
Lewis B. has been able to build a million-dollar agency because of the tremendous amount of work that he puts into his business and his team. Lewis B. III, his son, says, “He’s one of the best businessmen on this earth, but an even better Dad. I knew he was going to accomplish it. It was just a matter of when. This is only the beginning; We’ll have the #1 final expense agency in the country soon.” He doesn’t measure what it will take to reach his goal, he just does whatever it takes. Lewis B. states, “Some people will say, ‘how many people do I need to contact a day,’ ‘how many people do I need to contact a week?’ — I don’t know. This past month I had 31,000 texts in a 30-day period. I send over 1,000 texts a day.
That’s not including the phone calls and emails. That’s what it takes.” Lewis B. expresses that he tries to stay off the phone. He does most of his business through text. He says that he has have to have a balance and know when people are interested or not. “I have a lot of agents who stay on the phone, but they don’t recruit. If I’m trying to recruit someone, and they feel like I’m trying to sell them or that I need them, they’re going to lock down and have less interest. What I do is send a text to see whether the person is open minded about business and I might also send them my website and tell them to watch a couple of videos and tell them that if they’re interested to get back to me. You can’t completely be off of the phone if you’re recruiting, but a lot of wasted time goes into talking on the phone.”
Helen A. shares, “Lewis B. is a focused, single- minded purpose driven, firm, yet compassionate leader who is committed to helping every agent partner in his organization to succeed.” Lewis B. does whatever it takes to encourage and guide his team. He says, “I stay single-minded focused on their success. Here’s what I know: I know that if I help people become successful, then I too will become successful as well. That’s how you build a million-dollar agency.” Rodrick M. says that Lewis helped him become successful by encouraging him at the beginning of his career. Rodrick M. shares, “It seemed we talked and ate lunch a thousand times before I decided to partner with the man who would become my mentor in the final expense business. One of the things Lewis would always tell me is, ‘Rod you got to stop listening to yourself. You may not like this, but it is listening to yourself that has you in your current financial situation. If you are okay with that, then keep listening to yourself but if you are not ok with it, stop listening to yourself.’ Lastly, what gave me the confidence to jump in with both feet was the confidence Lewis had that I could do this business. Lewis said, ‘Rod there’s a lot of money to be made in the final expense business, and I believe you can do it. Rod more importantly, I will help you do it.’ That single commitment he made to me has changed my life financially for the better.” Lewis B. helps anyone who is willing to put in the work and has a lot of amazing people on his team. However, Lewis B. knows that not everyone is willing to do what it takes. He says, “One of the problems that I’ve seen with some managers is that they try to force people to do things that they don’t want to do. I stay focused on helping people that want help. Let’s say I’m working with you, and you’re not showing any interest in doing this. I’m not going to try to make you do this. I won’t try to make you feel bad, I won’t tell you that you’re crazy, or that you’re not smart. I won’t do any of that. I’m going to tell you, ‘when you’re ready, let me know and I’ll help you.’ It’s going to take work. There’s no such thing as success without work. There’s no free lunch or lottery ticket, you’ve got to go to work. I think that’s one of the challenges that a lot of agents have. They want to be successful really badly, but I don’t know if they’re willing to talk to enough people. Again, it’s a numbers game. Whoever’s willing to talk to the most people will make the most money.”
“HERE’S WHAT I KNOW: I KNOW THAT IF I HELP PEOPLE BECOME SUCCESSFUL, THEN I TOO WILL BECOME SUCCESSFUL. THAT’S HOW YOU BUILD A MILLION-DOLLAR AGENCY.”
Lewis B. feels tremendously happy about achieving his goal of becoming a million-dollar agency. He states, “When I saw those numbers, it was a great accomplishment. I was so happy for my team because not only did I see my numbers go to a million, I saw Charaka C. at $275,000, I saw Rodrick M. at $262,000, I saw Helen A. at over $160,000. These were all their best numbers ever, and we had 14 organizations that went over $50,000, and most of those people had never been over $50,000 ever before in their life. So, it wasn’t just the Lewis B. show, it was a collective Consolidated Planning show. Everybody came together.” Even though this was an exciting milestone for Lewis B, he says that it wasn’t nearly as exciting as reaching his first goal. He shares, “In July of 2016, we crossed over $100,000. That was actually a more momentous moment then, than the Million now, believe it or not. I cried like a baby in the Detroit airport in July 2016 when we crossed over. In order to get to a million, you’ve got to get to $100,000. We doubled our production from June to July.” Lewis is thankful for being able to reach his goals and continues to push himself and his team to reach even higher goals. “Last July, we did half of a million. In less than a year, we doubled again. So, you can’t tell me that you can’t double this thing in a very short period of time.” Lewis B. shares that his next goals will stretch over the next couple of months, “One million is great, and we love it, but we’ve set a goal for one and a half million this month. The real goal is two million, but in order to get to two million, we’ve got to get to one and a half million first. If we don’t hit it, fine, we’ll be fine, but the goal is one and half million in July and two million in August. We want to double again, but this time do it in two months instead of 11 months.”
To be successful, Lewis believes that you have to start working and don’t quit. He says, ”The one thing I would encourage people to do is recruit, recruit, recruit. It’s important to get stable in your income to recruit. The only way to become stable in your income is to write business. The key is to get stable, make some money, show people your success, and you’ll win.”
