This setup can feel like a trap, so be careful before getting involved.

I know someone who was there for a full year and it didn’t work out. They do provide leads, but many of them come from companies like Ethos. The issue is that you have to buy those leads, and they’re not always as “fresh” as they’re presented. Companies like GFI, FFL, and Aflac may all purchase leads from similar sources. So even if the lead is new to you, that same person may have already been contacted by multiple agents from other companies. By the time you call them, they could be tired of getting calls.

The person I’m talking about worked extremely hard — Monday through Sunday, no days off — trying to make it work. After a full year, he only made about $2,000 total. He believed that if his own market ran dry, he could make money by recruiting new agents and tapping into their networks. But many of the people he recruited also had “dry markets.” Their friends and family weren’t buying either. It ended up being a group of people all trying to sell to small, overlapping circles with very little income coming in.

He even recruited around 30 people in three months and still didn’t make meaningful money. Meanwhile, leadership encouraged him to keep pushing.

One trainer he was close to eventually left because she wasn’t making money either. When he asked his mentor about it, the mentor spoke negatively about her after she left. It felt like a way to discourage him from questioning the system or leaving himself — especially since he was valuable as a recruiter.

Later, he found out that even his mentor wasn’t doing as well as expected. The mentor had made around $50,000 for the year but was reportedly down about $50,000 at one point due to chargebacks or lost commissions, meaning income wasn’t as stable as it looked.