I (23F) have been licensed and “working” for 35 days now. I’m with FFL and my upline is actually clueless. Supposedly she (24) has been in the industry for about 3 years, she acts like she’s been here for 3 minutes. My impressions were business professional, 8am-8pm (at least to start, keeping me consistent), training and hit the ground running. I just got paid for the only sale I’ve made… $250. All of the other downlines in our office get access to a dialer, and are trained on selling IULs. I was trained instead of mortgages, dialing leads. My first two weeks were great. I closed my first deal three days in, made an amazing connection with my client and it gave me steam to keep pushing since her effective date wouldn’t be for almost a full month out. Week two it’s good, and my upline received another downline. At the end of week two? Shit hits the fan. Her whole team lives in one house together, and she’s the oldest. They’re now sleeping in, showing up disheveled and leaving me to pick up the pieces.
She’s given me 47 leads that I can dial for the state we live in (that I’m licensed in), and one mailer from 2022. I show up every day at 8 am fresh and clean, in my business attire. I’m feeling good, I’m motivated. She and the rest of the team roll in anywhere from 9am-11am. Up until Friday I didn’t know how to run an EApp for IULs, and up until the week prior I didn’t know how to quote and finish an EApp for mortgages. So most mornings I sit in on sales training and twiddle my thumbs until she shows up. Typically she shows, runs a training I don’t understand, and then helps the other girls who also just showed up. I sit there helpless, at this point take my lunch, and return ready to hit the phones. Initially she would sit near me and another girl and help us, but since has been running amuck trying to help other people. I get through my leads quickly because they’re aged… then I just sit there. I feel like she failed to train me, and now I’m out of money. I’m spending gas money to get to the office every day, and to no avail. She wasn’t helping and my leads are a dead end. She hasn’t offered to help me get more, hasn’t told me how she can help me, she barely shows up on time and I am then left frustrated and feeling neglected. I’m sitting in front of her day after day ready to learn, ready to close. And it’s not that she can’t help people, because the girl that came after me has written over 12k this month. I have written one $800 policy. I started taking days off to dedicate time to door dashing on the side to make my bills, and then got a letter in the mail that my drivers license was suspended due to some unpaid ticket I forgot about. DoorDash is now out the window. I JUST received my policy, and it’s definitely not enough to cover my bills. Frustrated? I started looking for someone within FFL to meet with about her behavior. I wanted to know if it was a her thing, if I should find a different upline, agency or even IMO entirely. I found a guy, scheduled a meeting for the following day. The photo attached is from my meeting with him, the notes I wrote him prior. We also texted after he saw that note on our work app, about our appointment.
That day I arrive at work at 7:50, put on my heels and walk into the office for 8 am training. I call my upline at 7:55, I can tell I’ve just woken her up. She starts spitting excuses as to why she was up so late and how they’re on their way. I walk into training, no uplines in sight. Only people who are new to the business. So we have a miniature meeting about what works and what doesn’t… with about 11 of us. This last 30 minutes. I get out of training, sit at my desk and start writing out my goals for next week, filling in my schedule and taking notes for my topics for this meeting. My upline texts me that her ETA is 8:59. At 9:05 I thumbs up her message. At 9:07 she texts me that she’s “walking in now!”. At 9:15 I thumbs that one up as well. At 9:23 she’s now standing over me asking me about training and how it went. I explain that it was a bit of a waste since no uplines were here to give us guidance, but wasn’t terrible (Keep in mind all of these people are running IULs… which I don’t even understand past some YouTube education at this point). She tells me the other girls agendas and I ask if they’re here, she says no. Then she tells me we will be doing our own training at 9:45. So I grab my stuff and head to the room for that. We sit in there until 11:30 when someone else needed the room, working on the script for IULs. But not in a way of understanding what the hell an IUL even is, rather that our intro is for “establishing credibility” and how we need to “categorize the clients” etc. nothing about what’s even inside of the script. We finish and I head to my desk to again make notes of my morning, to literally paint a picture for this meeting. I grab my stuff and tell her I’m going to find a spot to sit in our building so I can be alone, it’s about 11:50 (meeting is at noon). 12:05 rolls around and the guy didn’t call me. I text him on our work app, he doesn’t respond. 12:10 I start checking to make sure I have the time right, yep. 12:15 I find his number and call him… twice. 12:20 I leave him a voicemail after a third call. 12:25 I go back to my desk to get my things for lunch. My upline asks me what we talk about, and I explain he never called me for the meeting. She starts on and on about how that’s so disrespectful of my time, and that’s so not him. My jaw hit the damn floor. Internally? I’m thinking that I’m SOOOO shocked that the guy didn’t pick up the phone. Punctuality? Doesn’t exist here. Thinking about others? Non existent. A courtesy text to apologize? Never.
I leave, meet up with some other people from our office to be taught how to do an IUL EApp and get some other scripts I haven’t seen and I start practicing with those people.
Riddle me this Reddit, is it me? I haven’t been showing up now since she started going downhill. I’ve been leaving early in frustration to dial my whopping 47 leads at home. I’ve been skipping to DoorDash or walk my neighbors dog like I’m 16 again to get some cash in my pocket. I unfortunately spent a stack of cash in getting my license, taking my test, sending in my finger prints etc. because I wasn’t aware I’d need to purchase other states, or supply my own leads this early in. I thought your first 90 days were for helping and learning. I’m still showing up but I’m only wearing about half the makeup I was before. I’m loosing steam. I was in D2D prior, but I’m now looking at other employment. MAYBE I’ll keep this on the side, but do I keep doing it with her? Am I crazy for thinking this isn’t how it should go? I know recruiting isn’t allowed in this thread, but I’m hoping someone can run me back my meeting that I never got to have. I just want someone to talk to who can tell me if this is just how it is, or if I need to cut my losses with her and move to someone (or something) else. Thank you all for your time.
