 92% of people fell out of this business, which is insane. You believe there's four reasons why. You believe the first reason is a lack of training. Yes, yes. Explaining that. So here's the thing. Again, just one man's opinion. There is an overemphasis on recruiting. What you should be doing as a new agent is learning the craft of selling insurance, okay? So I say a craft because salesmanship is a skill. And it's not something you just do innately. I'm an admitted introvert. During my teenage years, I'd rather play video games. I was too afraid to call Pizza Hut when I was younger. But the point is in me mentioning that is that sales is a skill you can develop no matter what your background is. What's up, what's up, what's up? Hey, I'm Cody Askins. I'm super excited about interviewing my good buddy, David Duford today. Dave, how are you, bro? Greetings and salutations. How you doing, Cody? That's right. So where did that come from? Oh, I ripped it off from some radio personality in Knoxville. It just stuck with me and I'd. Dude, it's like ingrained in me that when you start a video, you know, now? Yeah. It's like, if you don't say it, I'm like, dude, where's the greetings? Yeah, right. It's funny. It's like that's the moniker or what people remember. Oh, greetings and salutations, dude. Yeah. That's right, man, that's right. Well, those that don't know, I don't know how the freak you don't know, but we'll act like you don't. That's what you're supposed to do with the video. David Duford is the, is, dude, I think of you as like the renaissance man of the insurance industry. Thank you. You also strike me a, how old are you? 35. You strike me as kind of like an old soul in a way though. Old soul. It's like balding on my head. Well, I wasn't gonna go there, but. Yeah. I am. I listen to classical rock, classic music. Old, I've been told that many times from my life. Good, man, good, good. Author of three bestselling insurance sales books, owner of DavidDuford.com, a national insurance agency devoted to training agents to become top producers in final expense, Medicare annuities, and mortgage protection. Most probably just think of you as final expense, but that's not actually true, which is cool, right? And, you know, I've heard that with a lot of my videos as well. You're here today to promote your newest book. Have you released this anywhere yet? Yeah, you can find it on Amazon. The book is here. The official guide to selling insurance for new agents. Boom, the official guide to selling insurance for new agents. I'm excited to discuss that, man. Yeah. Thank you. What got you to write the, where did the book come from? I know you've... Yeah. Because when I think about you, right? I have a, I don't know why I always do this when I start an interview. I always like to tell people what I think about them. It's just, it's weird, but it's my thing, I guess. I think of you as someone that for a very long time, a very long time, 10, 12, 15 years? Seven. Seven years? Yeah. Dang, dude. Okay, see? That's old soul. That's old soul because you just, you feel like you know a lot, as if you'd have been in the business a lot more than seven years. I know my father was an entrepreneur or my grandfather was an entrepreneur. Maybe that's part of it. Yeah. And what I think of you as someone that is deeply convicted to help insurance agents succeed. You put out so much freaking content over the years, you know? You're probably the inspiration for why I even started doing YouTube, to be honest. I'm sure that's the case, right? I used to watch your videos. Cool. I think of you as someone that is a good, honest, ethical individual, cares about people, wants to do the right thing. Where did that come from? Before we get into the book, where did that come from? The honesty? I guess so. So I just, it's easier to remember than a lie. There we go. That's good. That's good. No, I mean, the funny thing is, and this is just my opinion here. Yeah. And the reason why I wrote this book is there's just so much misinformation. Now it's improved, I think, in the last five years or so, but there's so much misinformation on how this business works and how to be successful in it. There's a lot of wrong turns that so many otherwise trusting agents go down. And I put this book together and I do what I do to help as much as I can to prevent that from happening. Obviously, I'm in business too. I recruit agents to me, but even the fast and dirty people that watch my content don't join, but they still get value out of it. And so I think, I don't know, I kind of call it the karmic effect. I'm not a particularly religious person, but I really believe if you just give to your heart's content and you care about the people that you work with, what goes around comes around. And if you're out there trying to scam people, it's gonna come back to you. Totally. 10 times worse. Yeah. So I guess I kind of adhere to that. Yeah, I think that's one of the big reasons we get along so well. My wife always says, good things happen to good people, you know? Yeah. And also, yeah, you talk about your agency, but you're not jumping on YouTube, freaking pitching and recruiting all the time. You know, that's just not your MO. You know, I should do that more. I just forget. Really, honestly, I just forget. Oh yeah, I got this book here. That's why I'm doing this interview with you so I can purposefully promote myself. That's right. You know what? Before we get into this, okay? I want to encourage people to, I get nothing out of it. And honestly, if you sell a crap ton of books, you don't get anything out of it either, right? Except for a little bit of publicity. You don't become rich by selling and writing books. You just don't. I haven't written one, right? We've talked about this quite a bit. You have, you've written three now, but I would encourage people, I would say there's one thing that has benefited me over my career and that's realizing that other people know what I need to know. And if so many people are struggling, you need to take a moment. I don't even care if I freaking pay for the book form. I don't even buy, I don't even care. I just know that the book has got some wisdom in it that every single person in our freaking industry needs to know. And you just need to buy the book, right? Get with Andy after this. I wanna buy them for my whole team, okay? Whatever it takes, if it benefits someone and my team and myself and others can learn, my video team, whatever can learn something about how to help agents better. And I know we will by reading that book, the official guide to selling insurance agents, right? The official guide to selling insurance for new agents. I had to look at the title real quick, yes. Selling insurance for new agents. That's what happens when you write so many books. I've got so many, I can't get you cracked, right? But I love that you're willing to help people, that's what you're doing. Now let's start off here. 92% of people fell out of this business, which is insane. You believe there's four reasons why. You believe the first reason is a lack of training. Yes, yes. Explain that. So here's the thing. Again, just one man's opinion here. There is an overemphasis on recruiting. What you should be doing as a new agent is learning the craft of selling insurance, okay? So I say a craft because salesmanship is a skill and it's not something you just do innately. I'm an admitted introvert. During my teenage years, I'd rather play video games. I was too afraid to call Pizza Hut when I was younger. But the point is in me mentioning that sales is a skill you can develop no matter what your background is with enough time and effort. And going back to your point, if you're a new agent and you're getting into the process so you can recruit other people, you gotta ask yourself, what advantage do you bring a new agent underneath you if you've never sold anything before? And the thing is, and again, this is really, this book is directed to new agents more than anything. This is something many of us who are experienced understand as to this just as the way it is, but many new people have no clue. And the point is is that the training element of selling is the most important thing to practice, to get better at, because ultimately if you wanna build a down line or build an agency, more power to you. But wouldn't it be better if you knew what you were doing first and you could relate based off a personal experience? Yeah, I get that question actually a lot as I'm sure you do too, you know? And I get it a lot. Like, do you think new insurance agents should start out recruiting? And I'm like, dude, you can't lead by example what the heck are you gonna recruit to? Yeah. Like, I have made no money and you should join me as I make no money. Doesn't make any sense. Hey, I've never cut open a single person doing a surgery but please trust me, I'll show you what to do. Don't make me say it. That's good, that's good. So to expand on a lack of training, what kind of training do you feel like is important and what kind of training do you talk about in your book? So the training that's most important, it's gonna vary by the person. So some people need more face-to-face training. Maybe they'll do best in an office environment where there's a routine meeting where things are repetitive and there's camaraderie. There's a lot of people that fit that. There's some people that all they need is a script, here are your applications, they'll figure it out as they go. So what I try to suggest agents to do is pick from a cacophony of all of that. Do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that. Expose yourself to different training modalities, I guess you could say for lack of a better word. And what was your other question? What do you cover in your book in regards to that? Yeah, basically that. That you wanna be in a position where you can extract as much information as possible. The other thing I forgot to mention is man ride-alongs are really good. If you can get out in the field, if you're brand new and you can just see it happening, I'm telling you. We're all doubting Thomas' to an extent. And I remember my first ride-along, I went with a guy named Andrew Fike in Atlanta and he wrote like 2,500 in premium in a day. He didn't even start to like 12 or one. And I was like, dang dude, this dude didn't do anything that difficult. Right, but that was really important to just get me totally dialed in, invested in the process. So your organization should do all of that for you. If they're not providing this, if they're just throwing you to the wolves without any sort of preparation, there's a problem. Now I will add, I think there's a point where there's too much training or better put, the training you'll ultimately get is based off of you being in the field and trying out an idea and then figuring out what happened if it didn't go the way you wanted it to. You cannot go into this with a perfectionist mindset. So there's extremes on both sides of course that you just want to make sure you're managing. Absolutely, I love that you say that too because most insurance, the type of personality that wants to know everything before they do anything is less likely to be successful in our industry. Yeah, no, it's just, it's funny that to me, I put my agents on a two to four, depending on what kind of leads they get, at least at most I should say a month's worth of time before they should be in the field. You don't need to spend weeks even studying the material. Again, I'm not saying that training isn't important. I'm just saying it will become, there's only so much you can do to start and then when you apply it and then go back, that's where a lot of the learning happens is based off of real world experience. But I wanna see agents out there as quickly as possible because that's where the magic happens. That's where you get to see if this business is right for you. That's where you get to see what you've learned, how it actually works or possibly doesn't and what you can do to modify it. It's all about seeing the people and really learn and experience this business. That's right, yeah, I learned that a long time ago as a new agent, I'm like, okay, if I sit with so many people a week, I'm probably gonna get similar results. And most agents felt like you're talking about because they just struggled to get in front of people. It's good, so good. Yeah, the second reason you say is no mentorship. What do you mean by no mentorship? Again, kind of comes into the same conversation we just had with an emphasis over emphasis on recruitment out of the gate. Mentorship means different things to different people. Mentorship consists of coaching, it consists of training, it consists of support. And the thing you have to think about insurance, no matter what you're selling, is insurance is like the old Gilded Age, right? So what's the Gilded Age? Well, that's where your father would teach you how to do carpentry, right? And you would work for him or you'd work for somebody else for like five, six, seven years and then when you were good enough and you knew the trade well, you'd go open up shop yourself. But there's a direct learning from the master, okay? Where you're the neophyte and you know nothing is really don't when you get to, even if you have a sales experience and you get into this, you don't really know much, you know, this business is different. But to learn from somebody who's been down the road you wanna go and who is a shining example of success that is so important. If you're finding your mentorship again from people who are untested by the travails and the ups and downs of this business, it's their wisdom is subject because they really haven't earned any wisdom. They're just repeating what's in a book somewhere and that's never good. No, for sure. I mean, I talk a lot about coaching and mentorship. I love that you brought, bring this up because I really believe that coaching, being around people, being around people like you and people that you can learn from and spending that time. That's why I love the whole ride along thing. Getting around people to think on a different level and that maybe no stuff that you don't know is so powerful. It motivates you, it challenges you. It puts stuff up here that you didn't have. I love that. Have you read Ray Dalio's principles book? I have not. Okay, so I suggest picking that. The reason I'm mentioning that is because the one thing and Ray Dalio is this multi-billionaire hedge fund owner. He's been successful for a long time, eats the markets. And the one thing he says in his pre-section of the book before he gets, it's like a 600 page book, it's very detailed. But he says a lot of my success is understanding what I don't know in the sense of, okay, I know I don't know about this. So I'm gonna find people who can help fill the gaps there. And it's funny too, it's like, yeah, you're right. It's like, you can only do so much. And this is very, I'm a very independent person running my business, but I have gaps of knowledge in certain places and you have to rely on somebody else to build yourself back up, to build the success in your business. And as a new agent, you're not gonna know everything you have to be humbled and understand, I gotta be coachable if I wanna actually make something out of this. And if you don't come in humble, you will end up becoming, we will get humbled at some point. Yeah, that's true. That is true. And thank God, I think, it's a good thing to be slapped around. It teaches us some much needed humility. I know I've certainly had that on the midget. No doubt, no doubt. Well, and dude, that's something I think I'm learning and I'm probably behind you. But honestly, you're one of the most humble people I know. And I am naturally a very confident individual and I have to be freaking slapped around every once in a while. I think we all do. Right, right. I think it's good. It's good, yeah. Well, hey, I had a quick story. I have a trainer that provides me meal plan and workout and I have been slacking off on the last, really the last year and a half and just maintaining. And what happens is that I had a heart-to-heart with him and he chewed me out, man. And I sat there taking it, oh, it was rough, but it was right, but I needed to hear that. So it's good to have somebody that will correct you if you're doing something that's not optimal. And that's what a good trainer will do. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Anything on mentorship before I move to the third reason? Yeah, I think that's good. You believe that the third reason is not having a system of success, right? I love that you, yeah, I love that you used the word system. I truly believed as well in our business, the most successful people are doing the same thing every week. Right, boring, same old stuff, really. Yeah, what's your thoughts on having a system of success? Want me to preach on that? Let's do it, bro, I'd love to hear it, man. Yeah, so the thing is that you have to think about insurance sales like an assembly line, right? You have to not make it, make the complex simple. What really matters in being successful in insurance sales? And it's what you said earlier, Cody, it's seeing the people doing sales presentations with prospects, but not just that, doing it a number of times a week. I like to talk about the magic number 15. I think 15 presentations is where a lot of the magic happens in this business. And if you're hitting less than that, there's so much variability that you're probably not going to see the results you want. So the thing is, well, I can say I can do 15 presentations a week, or I can say I'm going to write six, seven, eight apps a week, whatever the deal is. But how do I actually get there, right? What's my roadmap from proclaiming a goal and actually achieving it, not just on a monthly or even weekly basis, but a daily basis, okay? So for me, the big thing I'm talking about on my channel with my agents this year is you've got to be process obsessed, not results obsessed, process over results, why? Because the process, hitting process goals ultimately produces results, right? Meaning adhering to your system of activity and achieving those daily goals adds up, the first step in a thousand miles kind of thing. And if you're not doing that and you're underachieving those goals, what's going to happen? You're not going to hit your goals. Every time I talked, well, I say every, about 90% of the time I talked to agents. You know what they're the biggest reasons why they're not successful? It's because they're not doing enough activity. They probably are going to say something like, if I just get in front of somebody, I'll sell them and I believe them. Or the lead sucker that I'm gonna not get with objections or I'm not good on the phone or nobody wants to buy, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, but if you start pulling back the layers of the onions and you see, yeah, these leads suck, I only did two appointments. It's like, well, you only did two appointments. That's what really the problem is, you know? So I think having a system to achieve that is important and that's going to combine, depending on your marketing niche and what you're doing, you got to have obviously a niche, your product that you're selling, say final expense, you've got to have a lead system that's proven to work, lots of options there. I think mentorship comes along with that systemized approach and putting on paper your plan of action. And as I say in stock trading, plan your trade and trade your plan. But what you put on paper, make sure that you execute on a daily basis and have somebody as a sounding board to make sure to keep you accountable that you're gonna do that. Is there any, how do you recommend an agent keep track of their activity or what's important to track? Well, I mean, I'm sure you, yeah. So I keep it simple. I just have a spreadsheet I created with some formulas on calculating basic metrics, like average no show rate, how many appointments it takes over the phone, how many calls it takes to set an appointment, how many doorknocks it takes to set an appointment, how many leads you need to purchase each week, return on investment. So the thing is is that we're basically taking the end goal, right? Which is how much sale, how much money you wanna make, right? But you got to granularize it, go all the way down to the basics, which is big goals start with prospecting calls. So for me, again, the biggest thing for agents to track is their calls, is their doorknocks. And from there, how many presentations are they getting and are they achieving their daily and weekly goal? Weekly is 15, you work five days a week, you need to do three appointments a day. Well, how many doorknocks or calls will have to make? Well, maybe it's 50, maybe it's 10 doorknocks. Your goal is to do that. And if you just understand that, that if you hit those goals and you're tracking your numbers, so you know in live time, what numbers are actually you need to hit to hit this, then it'll all work itself out. Yeah, exactly. I was just training and coaching an appointment setter and an agent. And I was challenging the appointment setter to encourage them to track dials, people I speak to conversations, appointments set, appointments sit every single week as an appointment setter. And it's the freaking exact same thing. It's that system of success. Here's the thing about tracking your activity. You'll automatically see a boost in your results. It's been time and time again in sports and business. If you keep track of what you do, there's just something that happens that it gives you a lift in your own, even if you do nothing else differing. You just write your goals down, right? It's kind of the same thing. People are most successful in their life, write their goals down, they carry it with them, they know what they are, they rehearse them. It's the same thing. This is the same thing. Your system's on paper or online, whatever it is, on a spreadsheet, you track it, you keep on top of it. There's just some, I don't know what it is, just momentum that builds from it. That's, dude, I love that you brought that up. Like, I've got a massive smile on my face right now because I'm a big, I'm a big goal guy. And a lot of people, there's a lot of people that think it's, you know, goals are stupid and cheesy and whatever else, but they probably won't ever reach anything either. What's your opinion on goals, goal setting? I'd even love you to freaking share one of your own personal goals if you're okay doing that. Yeah, so, oh, so opinion, let me answer the first part, and I'll answer that. Yeah, your opinion on goal setting, how you should set goals, what kind of goals you set, especially as an agent. Yeah, so the great thing is exactly the same conversation we had just in not in terms of activity, but in terms of goals. But it's the same extrapolative process. And that's, you know, what do you want? Okay, what's a challenging but achievable goal? Then after you've determined that, how are you going to get there? All right, where are you today, January 1st? And how are you gonna get to whatever that is? Let's say, you know, whatever that goal is, 200,000. And you just do the numbers and crunch so you can devise a daily plan, okay? Again, I've moved from more of a weekly perspective to a daily perspective because, you know, today is the day of action. Now is what we can control. And so our objective, our purpose is to hit those objectives. So that's the same thing, Kody, I don't know if I'm answering the question. Well, I look at a major goal and then put a pathway to get there. And I'll tell you what I'm doing in my business. So I have a goal of doubling my internet traffic. So the way that I have internet traffic right now is predominantly through YouTube, but also through search engine optimization. And I've played around on different mediums, like different social media to try to see what's the most beneficial in my business. And what's been the most beneficial to me has been YouTube first. And then second, but I think a huge opportunity is in search, Google search. So I believe there's an opportunity to greatly increase the amount of traffic that I'm getting through the creation of more better, useful content. So I've got some strategies and some ideas based around creating articles that are gonna help agents who have questions about what specific agency to join, kind of like review articles. And through that process, I'm gonna be helping more people. But I know that some of those people who are gonna be checking those websites will be interested in me too, a minority of them, but that's exactly the goal. So, and how am I gonna do that? Well, I've got a spreadsheet here by day, 360, 365 days of which article I'm writing each day. The whole year, huh? The whole year. The whole year, yeah. I laid out except for July and December. I'm not working in July. But yeah, so this is the thing. Dang, dude. This is just a basic minimum expectation. My personal opinion on things is I always try to beat my expectations. So I've given myself two weeks to write this particular article I'm writing right now. I'll be done with it in a week. So then I'll be able to do more. So I don't think about taking time off. I like to do more. So all my brain will crunch different problems. I'll create problems so I can solve something. You know, I don't wanna, the devil doesn't like idle hands or whatever. That idle hands or devil plays things. So that's the thing. There you go, that's right. I can tell that you're like that. What'd you say? I can tell that you're like that. I think that's a blessing and a curse to both of us. It is a blessing and a curse. I will tell you this. I've tried to work on being more content. But it's, I just, you know, I think if you're a creative person, you're just a creative person and you've gotta drive the creator to do content or whatever it is that this path, it's hard to just like, that's you. It's hard to deny that. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. You wanna double your internet traffic. Thank you for sharing that. That's great, dude. I love that. That's good, man. So back to the, Here's my goal book. Okay, guys. So like this here too, I carry this around everywhere. So let me just pick like this. There's a bunch of stuff that I did this year, different plans. Damn. You know, I'm right. I write stuff down. I'm, I don't, I don't like using the computer or word processors to write down my ideas. I know that's not how everybody thinks. Maybe it's cause I'm kind of liking that millennial generation X range, but I like writing things down. Cause I really think writing things down. Yeah. Dementce things differently. You're actively involved. You're writing, you're moving your fingers. You get to think slowly cause you don't write as fast as you type. Yeah. Do you, do you have the occasion? I just did this. I end up doing it every freaking weekend. The weekend right before Christmas, I did like a massive brain dump where I just freak ideas were flowing like crazy. I'm just like dumped them all out. Do you do that? Sometimes the one thing I've noticed with myself, it's a, it's a blessing in the curse is that focus is harder to come by for me with all the ideas that I've had. And so like a big thing I've done this year is I was building a consumer facing website. I've mentioned it to you last year. Yeah. I wanted to create traffic, but I had a heart to heart with myself because I was not just doing that. I've also got YouTube. I've also got books I'm doing. I also got this, recruiting. And I asked myself, what do I really want in life? Cause you can be anything you want to be in life, but you can't be everything, right? So for me, I love recruiting. I love training agents. It's more, it's more passionate to me than actually selling. And so I can achieve my goals financially and creatively, which is just as important through this process of going all in. So I've always been all in, well, to an extent, but now I'm even more all in because I've put everything else beside me. Like I was going to do different things outside of this in the business, but I'm all in on this because I, this is what I'm good at. This is what I enjoy. And if I just do more of it, one thing every day talk to agents times 10 years, you know, I'll be pretty, hopefully pretty well set. That's huge, man. There's so many, there's tens of thousands of ways to make money in this business. And it's, that's a huge curse to, you know, I mean, you've had agents that have probably made quarter of a million dollars and a squirrel runs by holding the Medicare card and you know, it's true. It's funny cause I'm looking, I was looking for a book over here by a guy. Gosh, I forget his name. Is that it right there? Sorry, I don't, I don't mean to. No, you're right. You're good. But Randall Baskin, you ever heard of Randall Baskin? He started American continental before it sold. Aetna didn't buy it originally. Some other company did then after he bought them out. But I, reading his book is like, if you've read Napoleon Hill, it's Napoleon, it's applied Napoleon Hill, think and grow rich. Okay. So what do I mean by that? You actually get to see someone go through their walk of life and go through this process of severe poverty and then grow themself into a multimillionaire. You know, this is a guy in middle Tennessee, rural living in dirt floors, his parents were nuts. You know, they abused them, but he turned his life into something incredible and helped tons of people. But the one thing I wonder the reason I bring that up is this is like in the 1940s, 50s, there wasn't access to as much information as there is now. And while that's a good thing, I think on the whole, he only had one insurance opportunity. He didn't, he couldn't have the space to think about five different ideas, Medicare, annuity, final expense. And sometimes I think that's probably a good thing. You know, it's just give yourself the time to do one thing instead of being pulled because we know recruiters are calling you constantly. You're seeing our videos and you're second guessing yourself. You know, there's a level of trying to put blinders on once you've determined what you're gonna do and just do that. Yep. Yeah, sometimes I feel bad because I do, I'll do videos on different topics and then someone will reach out and I'm like, well, the point wasn't for you to like freaking change your whole business plan because you watched a video, you know? Yeah, well, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk says, as said in a couple of his videos, Gary Vay, a big social media influencer kind of guy. Huge, huge. He talks about once you see my stuff and you get it, just shut my stuff off and just go to work. Like, so he says things like, once you figure it out, you don't need to have this ongoing effort. It's like focus on your goals. Yep. So yeah, no, I agree with you too. I've long thought about putting out a video that says stop watching my videos. Only after you decide what you want to do. Yes. Yeah, do you really want that though? I mean, if it helps them sell and be successful and follow through, yeah. If they're not sure, there's nothing wrong with being unsure. Just understand you're not going to be, I don't think you can be 100% like, well, there's a few people who are completely 100% dialed in, believe in the total zealots about what it is, their cause, their product that they're selling or whatever. But the vast majority of us will have doubt. Doubt's okay. It's just not letting a smidgen of doubt get in the way of actually doing something. And that happens to a lot of people. The doubt seeps in and they talk themselves out of taking a chance, taking a chance to get out of their comfort zone. And it's tragic because that's the only way you get better, right? It's when you put pressure on yourself and do something different. Absolutely. Absolutely. Dude, man, we could go for hours. Dude, I love this. I love this, man. So back to the official guide to selling insurance for new agents, okay? The fourth reason why you believe that 92% of agents fail is, and I'm excited to hear you expand on this one because I don't get it yet. I may, but I think you may have a different spin on it. The fourth reason you believe they fail is misplaced priorities. Can you expand on that one for me? I feel like a broken record here, not by your stretch, but I feel like I'm repeating the same thing, but I think it's important, right? So like misplaced priorities, right? So what's priorities in this business, right? It's to see people, right? Yeah. Priority in this business is not to take all the licensing exams. Priority in this business is not to know everything about each carrier before you go do something. The priority, meaning if you wanna be successful and to make a nice income, the priority then is seeing the people. So anything that attracts from you seeing the people on a daily basis is a misplaced priority. I would argue, just like we mentioned earlier, recruiting misplaced priority out the gate. What time? You can manage it because you've earned the right to because you've been successful. Now you can duplicate yourself and you proven to be able to discipline yourself to a schedule. So go for it at a year in or something. There's a lot of people that would disagree with us on that by the way. Okay. I don't care. I don't either. I mean, they might be right too. I mean, that's, I'm willing to say here that, I mean, I believe I'm right because it's right. There could be somebody that's built up like a, you know, MLM type company without ever selling that's just their comfort zone, you know, and they've got money. They're okay. They don't need to sell, but I think it's few and far between. Well, I think when we go and duplicate, when we're interested in duplicating a proven business model, we should go after models of success that have had multiple proofs, right? So like the final expense model is a provable, duplicatable system. You can do it with various forms of leads. You know, you have to buy leads. You have to see the people. That's something that you can teach. What you don't want to do, and this is where people get, and I, me personally too, there are methods of generating leads or business models that are not duplicatable. And just because this one guy does it, and he does it in a crazy way that nobody else does, doesn't mean that you can. I hate to say that. You could do anything, I guess, with enough time and effort. Sure. But I think there's a level again of humility and going after, you know, the basics. Like I'll tell you real quick, I failed out of this business a year in. Why? Because of my own arrogance. Partially the company I work with, but mostly my arrogance. What, why do I say that? Well, I was working final expense, working your traditional direct mail leads, everybody you've seen. And I got tired of seeing the dead beats. I don't want to see any more of these losers. You know, I wanted to get, I see the buyers, people are gonna throw me their checkbooks, right? And so I devised this new lead card and it was very specific. They called a 24 hour voicemail and I pitched them for 15 minutes on recording and anybody who pressed one at the end, they were like, all right, they're gonna be sold, right? So I ran the lead campaign and I ended up making less than I would offer these boring, old, state regulated mailer leads. And I was like, oh, and I spent so much money on it. That contributed to my downfall. And so when I failed out of business, I sat out for a couple of months, got back in while I had a full time job. But the one thing that I promised myself is I recognized what I did wrong, which I thought I was too smart for the system. So I went back to what definitely works. And that's, again, I think part of that's a maturity thing for me is you've got to, I had to accept the bad with the good. You know, we're talking about systems up here that will provide both. Nobody goes through this business without trials and tribulations. It's an accepted part. It should be an accepted part of the system. So don't let those deadbeats worry you too much again, because the paradox of this business, right, is that you can have three out of four of your appointments tell you to go to hell. Or I should say three out of four of your leads tell you to go to hell. But the one out of four that buys makes you a stud, man. You can do it every day. You're amazing. What's one thing that you look for in an agent that you feel like is super, super important to a part of their pedigree? That's a girl. That's like the $64,000 question, man. Maybe six months from now. The big thing for me, and this is good advice if you're interested and you want to recruit. Just my personal experience. I can't figure out if a certain person from a different background is going to be better than another person. But what I can tell you is this, the people who are the most successful in this business, they put their money where the mouth is. They have skin in the game. They buy leads, okay? So to me, if I recruit an agent, we require agents to buy leads, join an organization. The fact that they're willing to put some, and it's not the amount of money, as much as it is just the action of doing it. That is the best qualifier, I think. Doesn't mean they're gonna be successful, but it is something I think that shows a level of higher commitment than the guy who talks a good game, but never does anything. Yeah. So beyond that, I mean, I can tell you, I really like, I mean, business owner, former business owners are usually good. That's good. Entrepreneurial types. I know a guy that his mom and dad ran a restaurant. So he came from a business owner's family. So those are always really good finds. Because they grew up and they saw what it's like to run a business. It's not gonna be new when they were out there and grinded it out selling insurance. Yeah. You probably love the people that are the greatest salespeople in the world and they guarantee that they're gonna be this massive freaking hit. They're gonna be amazing. Yeah. Well, I hear that. Sometimes it's true. Sometimes it's not. No, most of the time it's not. No, I mean, I don't know. I guess my glass is half full. I mean, I always, if people can invest in themselves, I'll give them a shot. I'll help them. But what irks me the most is, again, misplaced priorities. That's good. It's not taking that step forward to give yourself a test and understanding you're not gonna know everything. That's worse than anything. At least go down in a blaze of glory. Yeah. You might find this business is not right for you, but at least by God, you did it. You tried, you know? I love that from a focused standpoint. Do you agree without, with this statement, without leads, an agent is unemployed? Okay. Purchase leads or just leads of any kind? Hmm. I'll go with leads of any kind because I can't say that there hasn't been a lot of people who haven't succeeded without purchase leads. Yeah. Yeah. I'm too. I mean, it depends. A lot of it depends on the market, right? You know, like, I think there's more successful final expense agents that buy leads. Again, it goes back to that. What system is duplicatable? Yeah. But there's businesses like, I got a buddy in Columbia, South Carolina, he runs a benefits company, multimillion dollar company, family owned, 40 years. Wow. You know, like they cold call on school systems, large industrial manufacturers, you know? Yeah. And that one's, that specific insurance sales section is really difficult to buy leads anyway. So yeah. Yeah. So it's less about to me, whether it's purchase leads or not, and more about the system. Yeah. What is your system of finding prospects? No matter if it's paid or unpaid, what does it take to make a sale? What does it take to make a presentation? And you can derive, even if you've got a cold call, a system, I think to be successful. Some more than others, I believe, but it all comes back to the system. That's good. That's good. Back to shifting back to the official guide to selling insurance for new agents. You talk about 8% of people that succeed in selling insurance. In your book, you mentioned vet your options. Yes. Yeah, please explain that. All right, guys. So if you're new to this business, understand something about insurance. This is not a traditional, in most cases, corporate environment where you don't ask questions, you don't get particular, you just put on a good game, okay? Understand that if you have a pulse, you're hired pretty much everywhere in the insurance business, okay? So that's good, but it's all so bad because there's not a level of filtering to find the best of the best. Not say that you are, but you may not be the best for their organization. Sure. So how do you overcome that? Beyond doing your due diligence online, if you actually sit down with an organization, you wanna ask pointed questions about commissions. How do I get higher commissions? How, what carriers am I gonna use? How much do leads cost? Am I vested 100%? What is the contracts entail? You wanna break down everything because, again, a lot of agents come into this business through referral. Usually they know someone in business that brings them in. Again, the multi-level marketing concept. And they just trust implicitly what that person tells them without really getting into the details of all of what I'm talking about. Don't be that guy. I have no, personally, as a guy who recruits agents, I have no problem getting as detailed as a person wants because I know if someone's asking those questions, they probably are pretty serious and they've done their due diligence and they are probably a higher chance of taking a stab at this. So, and how, and the last thing I'll say about that, Cody, what's great about this method of vetting your options, of vetting during an interview process is the key thing you wanna focus on is the response that you receive. Is there a response, and you may not, they may not say it, but it's how they say it that you need to notice. How do they react when you ask about commissions? How do they react when you ask about vesting or the contract? Is it supportive? Are they dismissive, negative? That's a bad sign if they are because no employer, anybody, a good employee or anybody wants to review a contract or what the terms are or know the details. We all want transparency as much as possible. So if you're getting heat when you do these vetting questions, that's probably a red flag. It's probably the tip of the iceberg of the problems you're gonna see. Hmm. What about, you're also talking a lot about, make sure that the individual's successful and know what the heck they're doing, but they're also good at developing producers. Talk us through that. So say that again, Cody, I'm sorry. Yeah, so it had to do with when, why you believe it's important when you're joining an agency to really look for something or someone that is focused on developing personal production. Oh. Producers. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Now I understand what you're saying. So here's the thing. Again, sometimes the best salespeople make the worst manager, all right? That's what this is about. You sometimes okay salespeople make fantastic managers, fantastic support. There are some people who are savants in this business that sell an incredible amount of insurance and they can't explain what they do. They can't teach you what they do. They don't know how to think outside of what they do and explain it to Neophyte. So I think it's important to not just follow the most productive agent, even though that's sometime that's pretty useful, but to follow the person who knows how to teach concepts to make the complex simple and can show you a process from A to Z. Again, they don't have to be the best in the world. They just need to be good and they need to have a track record too. So just be wary because why a lot of people who personally produce in their first year, there's a lot of these MLM type of organizations that encourage recruiting. So what do they do? They get into recruiting when really they should be focused on selling, but they're kind of pushed that way because that's what it takes to get higher commissions. Just be wary of that. It's not an all or nothing thing. It's just, again, vet your options. Do a ride, ask for a ride along before you get hired. See what it's like and see kind of how they respond to explaining things. They're excited about training you. If they're not, then good. Find someone else with plenty of efficiency. Absolutely. And you talked about earlier about us having a system of success. Should new agents ask someone what their system is? Yes, absolutely. Every agency that's hiring should be able to explain their system in a few simple steps. Somebody comes to me and says, well, how do you do final expense? I say, well, we are independent agents. We carry multiple carriers. We work with different kind of lead programs based on your budget. And the whole system is designed with you and mine in the sense that you take leads, you call them over the phone, set appointments, face to face, and then go see them face to face and close them on the first call. We duplicate this process daily. I'm here to help you support with underwriting and sales questions, like that just rattles off the top of my head. Every agency should be able to just, boom, nail that. If they can't, again, suspicion, what do you do? Then they may not have one, you know? Right, yeah. And that's the thing. There are a lot of agencies that do well producing, but they don't understand how to duplicate it. So it comes down to that system of success that's proven to work. You also discussed in your book about the characteristics necessary to achieve success when you are outselling insurance. Can you detail what those are again and explain why you feel those are important? Yeah, I'll hit a couple of them, I think. And it's all things that you don't have to buy, right? I mean, there are character traits that we all have at some levels, some lower than others, but we can all work on with time and effort. I think the big thing in this business to be successful is to be coachable, all right? And part of coachability is humility. You have to be humble and have humility to be coachable, right? Because if you think you're, you know what doesn't stink, then no matter coaching is gonna help a closed mind. So you have to almost be like, I'm not good at this, but that's okay, because I'm going to get better. You know, I'm at the bottom, I'm gonna get to the top, and I'm going to happily take instruction from somebody better than me who has done this for years so I can develop myself to the same level of success. So coachability and humility are the biggest things for me. Self-discipline is big. You've got to be able to set your own schedule. You've got to be able to keep your own schedule. You can't let family draw you away from your main work all the time. Obviously, if something bad happens, you've got to be around fine. But you have to treat this like a business, all right? Imagine if you were employed, somebody had you and their employee and you had to work so many times. That's what you have to think about. It's funny, we all leave the employment world to be an entrepreneurial, but the problem is, is people forget the things, the structures that helped us become consistently successful. We have to maintain that voluntarily. So self-discipline, humility, coachability, those I'd say are probably the three biggest things. I'd say, yeah, that's pretty much it. That's good, man, that's good. How many pages are the book? Let me see here. I have to look. 90, well, I mean 103. It's a short read, it's a short read, it's not. That's awesome. Yeah, it's really just, again, let me be clear. This book here is best for agents who are brand new to this business or newish. And it's all the stuff here, you and I, Cody, a lot of you experienced agents watching this, this is all common knowledge, but it was earned because of what we discovered through the process. But this is really a quick read. It's designed for people who are new to the business that wanna do well, but wanna know the answers to questions that aren't necessarily out there. And hopefully this is a quick read. It does a job and at least prepares people for what to truly expect out of this business. Yep, and where can they find it? How much is it? Yeah, so if you go to Amazon and you put in David Duford, you should see the book pop up. It's $9.99 for the paperback and then for the, I do have it in Kindle too, that's $2.99. So I made it, I try to make it as cheap as possible. Yeah, you're gonna get in order to make this. Crazy rich off selling this. Yeah, rich in spirit, my friend. That's right, that's right. That's good, man. That's I mean, $9.99, a homeless person could buy the book. So that's good. That's right. Dude, I think that's powerful. I think it's very needed. Majority of agents still freaking fail. We can't call 8% nation, which you were the first one on stage. We can't call it 9% nation yet, I don't think. That's good, man. The official guide to selling insurance for new agents. Show them again, you gotta grab the book. You gotta grab the book. I'm gonna grab it, you gotta grab it too, right on Amazon. Dude, there's whispers that we may or may not be doing a small training event together in the near future. Whispers, whispers in a one, I've heard those too. Okay, good, that's good, that's good. Dude, any other thoughts? See the people, see the people, see the people. That's it, man. That's about it. You're the man, I think you're an awesome dude. And thank you for your time and your willingness and dedication to helping as many new agents as you can. I really appreciate it. Cody, thank you for taking time to interview me. I really appreciate it. You got it, bro, thank you. And for those watching, thanks for watching from David Duford and Cody Askins, go get the official guide to selling insurance for new agents. Hey, if you love the interview, I just got to do it with my good buddy David Duford on his new book, then you'll love my interview with Miss Galen Hendricks. Go there right now, watch it, and I'll see you there. When you start thinking about insurance as selling and not as believing, you're never gonna sell a thing.