Dr. Billy Williams (Photo: YouTube screenshot)
If there is ever anything anyone wants to know about being a life insurance agent, Billy R. Williams would be the person to consult. In life insurance circles, Williams is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on building and growing an insurance agency.
The founder and president of Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring Services, he conducts small business coaching and mentoring. Williams is also the CEO of the Williams Family Investment Group, a group of more than 150 partner agencies that produce over a billion dollars a year in new and renewal insurance premiums, according to his website.
Williams, who served in the U. S. Army from 1982 to 2002, offers instruction through his YouTube channel, podcasts, webinars, books, and live training events.
Williams is one of the few Black Americans to make it to the top of the life insurance industry. In 2021, Black agents represented just 9.26 percent of all agents and whites represented 66.37 percent, according to the job recruiting platform Zippia.
Here are Williams’ eight lessons insurance agents need to know. They are offered on YouTube in an episode entitled “8 Lessons Insurance Agents Usually Learn the Hard Way!” Dr. Billy Williams offered his famous I.C.E.C.R.E.A.M. business lessons at the “8% Nation Conference” to share what many business leaders had to learn the hard way.
His core principles are: income, covering weakness, ego, emotion, expectations, communication, relationship, education, asking questions, and mentorship.
“I have made a lot of mistakes along with making a lot of money,” shared Williams. “If you’re afraid to fail forward, you’re not gonna make it.”
“All successful people say the same things; they just say it in different ways,” notes Williams, who stresses the language you use is important.
“All non-successful people say the same thing also– I can’t do it, I couldn’t make it work, I don’t know how you did it because I tried and tried and tried and I laid in bed and thought about it and prayed about it and it just never worked,” he explained, and asked, “So what are you saying to yourself?”
According to Williams, there are five lessons he’s learned that he’s dubbed the “five Ps.”
“I call them the five Ps,” he offered. “The first P is passion for your business.” He explains you should have enough “passion” for your business to “fund your passion.”
The next P is “product.” He said one has to have enough “product that can feed enough people to make the money you want to make.”
The next P, he said, is “profit.” “If you’re not running your business profitably, it’s not going to work for you,” he said.
Next is philanthropy. “Why do we want to be profitable because we’re supposed to be giving to our community,” he shared. “In order to be philanthropic, you better be profitable.”
The last P is “personification.” “You should be a personification of your values,” he said. “I should be able to see your God in you. I should be able to see your God in your business.”
According to Williams, when you have all of your lessons lined up, your money will literally be working while you are sleeping.
“A lot of you are not growing because you’re not marketing enough,” he said. He stressed that you should market your business to your network of friends and colleagues, produce videos, podcasts, eBooks that promote your business.
“There are three types of people in your life–money makers, money savers, and money takers,” said Williams, who added that “Your net worth is a direct reflection of your network.” So you should have fewer money takers in your circle.
“Most people make enough money to get into trouble but they don’t save enough to get out of trouble,” stressed Williams as a way of saying you should have an emergency fund in case your business hits a snag.
According to Williams, giving into your personal passions can lead to business disaster.
“Never make a financial decision while your libido is high,” he pointed out. “I can’t tell you how many businesses I’ve gone into to try to invest and there’s a pool boy bimbo account on the side somewhere.
There’s a strip club account on the side somewhere. There’s a ‘I got two girlfriends I’m paying for their
apartments’ on the side somewhere. You can’t run a business that way.”
Dr. Billy Williams (Photo: YouTube screenshot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5AKNPxyudw)
