 What is up? Thank you guys for joining today man. I'm excited. I get to talk to mr Jeff root owner of digital BGA and the you get you guys can see the face now to the voice of Modern life insurance selling podcast dude. I've been following you for so long. Thank you for being honest, though Of course man. Thanks for having me. You got it man for all those that don't know Jeff root Not only is a titan in this industry. I mean I'm telling you guys you can learn some stuff from this man I promise you that but also he's gonna be at 8% nation at Nissan Stadium with these dudes behind me Grant Cardone Ray Lewis He's gonna be a panelist speaker being able to answer your questions live from stage buddy dude up For those that don't know you give us a little rundown on who Jeff root is How you got your start in the business how you camp with this crazy idea to have like the most listened to Insurance podcast of all time Yes, but it's it's fantastic. I every time I get on a plane dude. I plug that thing in Yeah, so I've been in the life insurance business since oh six started at Northwestern Mutual Financial planning boots on the ground type guy Oh sevens started selling over the phone. I just went through my natural market and bought a batch of leads and One of the guys Wanted said hey, do you really do I really need to see you do I really need you to come to my office? Can I just do this over the phone? I was like, I think so and so that was kind of my taste and I was like, okay This I'm on to something here So I started buying leads and in 07 it was like shooting fish in the barrel You can go to any lead vendor and it was I mean it was you close a very high percentage It was really good until about I think oh a and that's when that pink hosting I don't know if anybody started pink hosting It's just a technology lead companies use and that kind of diluted the quality of leads and so I learned how to market for myself So I went to work for a call center life insurance call center and at the same time learn to market and that's where I kind of got my chops and marketing and you know about a year later and You know selling probably at the time, you know 2000 policy at the time I'm close to 3000 policies sold over the phone Total, you know, I've been able to kind of home the life insurance marketing aspect of it and the selling over the phone and So to bring that to you know the life insurance modern life insurance selling podcasts that you referenced, you know That's where I'm teaching agents To sell over the phone market online because there wasn't any there's not anybody teaching it at the time This was a couple years ago, you know, there's a few people out there doing it. It's great You know, but that was in response to people asking me like Jeff Hey, how are you ranking in Google right now or how are you selling? You know all these policies and you know How did you show up on this? You know in this magazine things like that and that's the kind of stuff we talked about in the podcast, you know It's a tight get yourself out there. It's you know, it's the modern life insurance selling So did that and then kind of put everything into a book And so I wrote a book called the digital life insurance agent. It's on Amazon And that is literally everything that I know even today everything I know is in that book So if you wanted to kind of take that route of telecells like it was basically all my podcasts Everything that I know in that wrapped up in that in that book. So and then to current day is on that digital MGA so taking all that helping agents You know with a more with telecells focused life insurance cells And so we built technology and back-end processing team to you know, take all the Non-revenue producing tasks off the table So so ages can focus on selling and training them to sell using technology and the things that I've learned and also doing that We're just we're just starting we just launched something to for the final expense side of things called digital senior benefits And digital senior benefits.com. So Exciting stuff, but yeah, that's that's where I am today Dude, that's amazing man to think that I didn't even realize with people selling over the phone back in 07 I started in 19. It was like I don't know or like it was like eight years ago nine years ago 2011-2012 and 2010 and Back then I wasn't allowed to Ask data birth. I wouldn't allow to ask health. I started out as like a captive agent I wouldn't love to you know do nothing no quoting no selling You you go to the home, you know, I had no clue there were people selling back on the phone even before I started That's that's just amazing Yeah, when we started we had to physically mail the application To the client, you know, and then we figured okay now now the examiners will start taking it Okay, so it got a little better so you upload you take the application over the phone fill it out You know pen to paper still And then upload it to the examiner and the examiner take it out. Okay, it's getting a little getting a little easier I don't pay for postage anymore and they can get the signatures and sometimes the social and everything like that But now it's so easy. I mean there's every company has some yeah or anything like that It's just it's you know, it's getting better every year. It's getting easier I think that I think that I think my next question and maybe more for me I know the audience gonna get something out of it, too. What was the vision behind Modern life insurance selling podcast. I've always just been so enamored with that man Yeah, so I mean like I said before it was in response to all the inquires all the emails and phone calls and It got to the point where some people didn't believe me, you know, like You know and so I almost felt like at one point, you know, there's I'm not the only one doing this And so I interview other people who do it and or doing these different things It's not just what you hear about when you trained at Wherever you start in the business, whatever captive or or whatnot. It that's everybody Trains and absolutes like this is how you do this. This is how you run your business and then you know people see me talking about these things and you know and and You know and it started from there was more to prove something to people like you guys really don't believe this Like this is a lot easier than it sounds, you know, you just have to you just have to get the knowledge and implement I mean all all I really am is a knowledge worker You know I absorb knowledge and and act on it. And so, you know, that's a second step to this whole thing So, you know to hear from other people on the podcast That's why interview other people because there are everybody has something They're good at that they can teach somebody, you know, so I may know something about Marketing life insurance online, but I don't know everything somebody else is gonna know something more than I do in different areas And that's why I did the podcast one. So yes about the vision. That was a long-winded answer Really, I wanted to meet other great people And I wanted to prove to people that other people are doing it and to motivate other agents to do that to bring the industry forward because the industry like I just mentioned before it started, you know It's filling out applications mailing them then to the Uploading exams and now we have these E apps and everything but the industry keeps moving forward And I think this is my way of kind of moving it forward with agents so if I can get a lot of agents that believe in this and You know, we can create this kind of movement of digital life insurance agents Then, you know, maybe these insurance carriers will get their apps together and start using the technology that all these other industries have, you know Completely well, thank you for pioneering that setting all that up man, dude and being and then to be to I Can I can already tell you're just a you're just a humble good, dude Because because to say that, you know, you did all this You know and that you you still learn from people and the people that know a lot more than you I'm telling you what it may be true, but you know a lot man. You've you've you've you know a ton You've got an incredible book like you said you've interviewed a ton of success people in this industry and that's what's cool is Sharing what others know with an audience and you've you've built an awesome following that that follows that podcast I want to ask you this though if you had to Say there's an agent that jumps on and watches this and they're like dude. I want to be Jeff root or What's one tip that that that that you would give to them to kind of to get started to kick off selling over the phone Generating leads through SEO and Google and online, you know and and just selling over the phone in general kind of kick starting that Because a lot of people they just don't know where to start Yeah, well, I mean I would I mean I would find a Okay, I'll start and say that we're I mentioned I'm a knowledge worker, right? And so a lot of people just don't have the knowledge to act They don't have the confidence to do something and so what's cool about what you're doing Cody is you know You're you're giving people that as well You know and you're you're giving in the tools and the knowledge to do that and showing Hey, there's other people that do this too So once people have the confidence then they're ready to step out And so if you can give somebody the confidence in a roadmap, you know And so I guess I would say find a mentor whether that's you or somebody else, but so that's something that is somebody that will Give you a roadmap on exactly what to do and then if you do these steps you go back to that person and say okay Now do these steps because that's how I'm mentoring people because a lot of people that that I talked to they don't do the work, right and You know, I haven't okay duty steps And I never hear from them again, but the people who do those steps they come back to me Okay, I'll talk to you. Well, we'll keep going and you know, we will build this thing So if you can find a mentor that can show you the roadmap that has done it that is you know That's and they're out there by the way, and and I'm sure a bunch of them are going to be an 8% nation That's you know a really cool thing about this event Clearly and you mentioned when we jumped on that you've been to a lot of events you love events What is it about? If there's an agent on the fence out there that's like dude, I don't know if I want to go to 8% nation Man, I don't know if I want to get go to this insurance wealth conference at an info stadium What advice can you give on why you believe they should? so the cool thing about an event like this and getting insurance agents together and You know Pete and even the I guess the influencers on stage together is we're all talking about the same things and When you meet some of these agents at an event That's where a lot of value comes and you you may get a bunch of motivation from these guys You may get a lot of actionable advice from some of these speakers But the people you meet at these events and the connections you make those Elevate your business so I can tell you we had a mastermind in Austin for For cell-term life, which is where the podcast is hosted and we had that a few months ago And we had 20 agents there. There were a couple partnerships formed there They had never met each other before but spending two days with the same people like you get to know these people and now they're partnered up And they're doing you know, they're covering each other's weaknesses, you know, they figured they figured out what they like to do and You know so to form partnerships to to to get insights on other people's businesses things that are Struggles for you or challenges in your business that somebody's like, oh, dude, here's how you do it This is what I do, you know, I go, okay, and it's one of those things I mean you hear you people say all the time like it's one idea one actual thing can change your business and The thing is when you go to these events like, you know, I'm traveling to Nashville. I'm an awesome traveling national Everybody's probably traveling from somewhere to get to Nashville You're more vulnerable when you're in when you're outside of your element and you open yourself up and you you know you kind of I guess absorb all the you know all the information and and it's just It's just a cool thing when you're at a conference that you can just get so much information and connect with so many people You have no idea what's gonna happen and that's why these events are so important I've and I thought about putting on an event like this for years I've just never done it and then like I'm so behind what you're doing because I've been waiting for an event like this Thank you, buddy, man. I appreciate that very much man It's a it's it's a lot of work our teams our teams grinding all day every day And we're excited to get there and he's on stadium the end of the end of next month, man It's nuts to think literally 34 days six hours and 56 minutes away. It's dude is flying by it's nuts Okay, so Jeff's gonna be on the panel. We're gonna have we're gonna have the audience submit questions Is one of the guys that's on stage guys and gals on stage answering questions and also We're gonna have some premier ticket holders that are gonna be able to ask questions with a mic What do you expect that? Because I love Q&A laugh. I think Q&A is is as valuable as anything else What do you think that they will learn? Simply by being able to ask like you said a lot of these influencers and learn by getting it having the ability to Actually ask a handful of the top influencers in this industry live with some live Q&A So that's the cool thing because it's it's not on script, you know and It's gonna force panelists and speakers to To give answers off the cuff you can ask a very specific questions, you know because a lot of people might go up there not give you the whole You know Yeah, but now you can press and they're gonna have to tell you Come up with those questions, you know, that's what I'm looking forward to like I'm an open book and so like Whatever you have come at me, you know I'll talk about my failures too. I'll talk about whatever Whatever it is What was the okay? Yeah, well, thank you buddy. That's super super super valuable I love that especially because it's you like you said it's off the cuff It's it's it's they are going to have to answer you they're gonna be in front of a thousand people in a stadium, you know, it's like that's What is you mentioned failure what is one thing That you learned After felling in this industry because we all fell at something in this industry at some point or another, right? What was it about you because 92% of agents fail Oh something that you learned that allowed you to not only to learn from what you were doing but internally able to get back up and keep going yeah, so in the beginning when you're When you're grinding and just just doing everything you can to be successful in this it's easy to cut corners I try to cut some corners and it every single time it led to failure Whether it's like SEO, I had a website generating 750 leads a month. I was doing some shady stuff to it You know just through the search engines and I was using you know, this was six plus years ago I was using some shady tactics and then overnight it went down to like zero leads. I got a Google penalty, right? And that was tough 750 leads to zero And then you have you know, I talked to agents daily and everybody's looking for Everybody's looking to cut corners like hey, how can I shorten my you know my my timeframe to success or to get leads from my website or to you know to cash flow this business better and There's no shortcuts, you know, you can't take these shortcuts And so that's kind of what I learned is that a lot of agents try and try and find those and they spend all this mental energy on that and It'll get you trouble the end of the day Yeah, I mean a lot of my failures were due to me in the beginning taking shortcuts and Yeah, so I'm I'm no longer do that and you know, I'm yeah And you know what there's no shortcuts to success. Yeah, you know people like Jeff root all the other guys gonna be at this conference They didn't become extremely successful Over night They didn't become extremely successful in 12 months. They didn't become successful in a couple years It takes time And that's why I'm excited to get everybody there to learn for people like you dude going out as we close this thing up Thank you again for being on I know our audience is gonna love you at a percent nation, buddy And we're actually we're gonna be an insurance news man in Chicago together here your next week Four days, I think Yeah, that'll be a ton of fun As we close out Give me one last pitch for all those that are like I'm on the fence man. I don't know whether I should go to this I'll tell you why I'm excited for it and I hope that gets other people excited all the Practitioners all the guys in the trenches every single day to get people together like that in one Area and you know, you have time cut out. I've seen on the agenda. Yeah, we're listening to people But we have you know those parties we have the break time you have the vendor areas you have all these times where you can just connect with other agents and That is where you're gonna get the most value that is where I've seen agents really kind of Get their aha moments get their takeaways from the whole experience And so yeah, you have a badass lineup of speakers, you know But what should get you excited is is meeting other people in the trenches Because it's lonely out there. I mean, I'm in my office by myself most of the day, you know And to meet people it's it's a cool thing. It's it's a good experience No doubt. Well, it's this it can be a super lonely business. That's why people like jeff man They go to events They answer live q&a They have a killer podcast they focus on bringing value and helping others Dude, I've learned way more from you Then you'll ever learn from me. And so I'm super good. Yeah People are grateful that you're a part of this. I've been listening to your podcast for years and you didn't even know it Every time I go on the plane I turn this dude on He's gonna be a panelist answering live q&a at 8% nation in nashville the end of next month at nissan stadium Dude, thank you again for being on this brother Can't wait to see in chicago next week and I can't wait even more to hang out with you in nashville 34 days It'll be fun. I can't wait to do this be a lot of fun for all those that are curious Just got a little code if you made it this long in the video Sell term life if you use the code sell term life Jeff may have a little discount for you a little hookup. So dude, thanks again for being on Thank you all for watching. Please do me a favor if you're thinking about going If you're on the fence, you need to get there go to aprecination.com to grab your seat to get to this amazing Incredible conference and to hang out with jeff rude in nashville. Thanks again for being on brother. Appreciate it very much. Cheers. All right