Millionaire Agency Owner Gives Advice To Life Insurance Agents (David Duford Interview)

Ladies and gentlemen, it is Tim Shocker here with Julian Polito from the Life Insurance Sales Channel. We have a very special guest here, Mr. Dave Duford, who is basically onboarded and trained over 5,000 insurance agents in his career. And basically we want to bring him here because you probably clicked on this video because you're a new agent looking at what the industry is actually like, what to expect and, you know, how to set yourself up for the highest chances of success and getting into this industry. So we're going to basically kind of go back and forth with Dave, who has some of the most experience in this industry, to give you some advice as you're getting into insurance. David, what's going on?

Howdy. Doing well. How are y'?

All? Doing good. Doing good. Can't complain.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Well, I want to kind of kick us off here. If you could give, you know, for people that are like, brand new to the industry, maybe they've seen you on YouTube, maybe they haven't. Can you give us, like the brief background of how you got into insurance and what your. What your kind of initial start was selling?

Sure, yeah. So I started way back in 2011. I had a personal training gym that was going down the tubes. I didn't want to get a real job, so I started looking for another entrepreneurial endeavors. Stumbled across the insurance business. Wasn't obviously my first pick. Usually it's not for most of us. But I found final expense. I liked it. It's pretty much one call, close oriented towards the salesman and just making sales. So I started off there, had some success, but then failed out after 12 months. Had to get a real job, get back on my feet, relearned the fundamentals that I strayed from. And then back by 2012, after my wife delivered twins, like literally the next couple of days, went back out on the road full time. Along the way, built my agency from starting about 2013 till present. And it's been our best month ever. Was last month, about 2.16 million in new production. So it's going pretty well.

Yeah, that's. That's incredible. 2.6 million in production. So basically, I mean, you mentioned that you failed out of the industry initially. Most people that fail, they, you know, they fail and then they never get back in.

Yeah, they're done.

Like, I guess you took one shot at the industry, it didn't work out, and then you took a second shot and it's just been compounding on itself year after year. Obviously you just did a two point, you know, I think you said $2.1 million month. What were the biggest lessons you learned from that first initial failure that allowed you to see so much success like the second go round?

Yeah. So I just got done interviewing an agent, Matt, who he wrote 40 or 41,000 in final expense last month in April 2024. And he said, what advice do you have for me? He's like six months in.

Yeah.

I said, just, just keep doing the same thing you're doing, dude, like the worst thing you can do. I think as, as an agent who's new or Maybe even like 6 to 12 months to start to think that you know more than the business. For me, what took me out is I started taking what I used to do in my personal training business as a form of advertising and thinking that it would equally adapt to the final expense business. So I blew a bunch of money on an untested concept I didn't have the money to blow, but I did it anyway because, you know, I'm arrogant. Was arrogant. I'm not arrogant at all. But anyways, made some sales, but then not as much as I would have made on those stale old direct mail leads that work and eventually changed some other stuff and got demoralized and then flunked out of the business, you know. So the reason I came back and succeeded in large part is because I got back to fundamentals. I humbled myself, I realized I didn't know everything and I should just follow the system and not deviate from it. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not perfect, but I think getting back to fundamentals, that's why I talk a lot about fundamentals in the business is so important because it's, it's the obvious stuff that caused people to fail, you know, not like not working the lead systems that work or not putting the hours in that they should. It's not the secret sauce that you don't have. You know, it's pretty straightforward business if you just apply yourself in a fundamental way.

100%. 100%. So really good.

Yeah.

Julian, you got a question?

I mean, honestly, there are a lot of agents who fail, and there are a lot of agents that you've seen have success clearly within your own agency as well.

Sure.

Outside of like doing the fundamentals, is there any character traits that you've seen or anything that like, if I'm a new agent watching this, you, you would say I would need to try and either like embody or that I would try to maybe adhere to, like, maybe even like a book to read. Anything that would, like, maybe help me kind of become the person that would be, you know, a top producer, more or less.

Well, incidentally, this is our recruiting guidelines, so, you know, I'll give you what they are. First of all, I think is coachability. Right? And here's how you measure coachability. If I tell you like, hey, you know, what you just said sucks, you need to fix it. It's not good. How you react to that. Do you take it personally or do you actually like, take it as constructive criticism to improve it? Like that's the measure of your coachability. The more that you cannot take criticism personally and apply what you have given in faith. You may not even totally understand what is being requested of you, but if you can do it and apply it with that leap of faith, you're likely going to more fastly move along the improvement curve and do well. Also, I think just a cheerful, dis. Mis. Misdemeanor demeanor. You want to have a cheerful demeanor. If you come in and you have a bad attitude, like it's poisonous to you, it's poisonous to other people, you're not gonna last long. You know, these, these final expense people eat you up and shoot you out. Right. You know, so I think it's good to have a positive attitude. You don't have to be fake about it, but you have to generally wake up and have a positive outlook on things. Realistic, but positive.

Yeah.

Other than that, I mean, work ethic, discipline are really important. Know you, you get better at this by putting reps under the bar. You know, you just got to do it at some point and learn from your mistakes. That coachability aspect.

Other than that, books to read besides mine. It's hard. I mean, Gez just read my books and you're covered. Shameless. Yeah, shameless. Shameless. Blood. You know, Brian Tracy, I always like Brian Tracy. Old sales, one on one type of books. Those are really good to start with. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's good.

Okay. And for, for like a, A new agent getting into the business, what should they expect their first 90 days in the business? Like, what does that actually look like in practice? Right. Everyone sold the whole dream. You know, you're going to be, you know, driving Ferraris and you know.

Right.

Rolex within 30 days. But what, like, what is the raw reality of actually being in the business? Sure.

Well, at first, so. So here's the thing. Number one, so much to talk about here. I'm glad you asked. One, keeping your momentum high and your spirits high as you get started. So important so you want to join organizations who are committed to getting you on the phone or in person in front of a prospect as quickly as possible. What you don't want to do is get in some kind of protracted process that takes months before you're actually on the phone. You will lose momentum. Thus the inspiration that's required to be successful if it takes too long. So I think, number one, that's really important. How does this all apply? Assuming you've gotten your license, your license, life insurance agent, I would say no more than two weeks it needs to take to get onboarded. Onboarding is with your agency. That's defined as getting your carriers contracted for the most part, going through the training process, learning the script, learning the carriers, doing virtual ride alongs, watching top producers produce. You need to basically enmesh yourself in this process as much as humanly possible. One of our best, our best agents, what they all do is they constantly listen to other top producer sales calls and they also record themselves over and over and over before they're on the phone to listen to what they're doing and maybe role play with others. So by the time they're talking to a real prospect, I mean, they've heard this stuff in some kind of simulated fashion. It's not like a complete shock. Now as far as what happens when you're on the phones and I'll. I'll just say telesales, because most of you out there, 95% want to do telesales. Yeah, yeah. I mean really, it's. You get the leads and you're on the phone and you start to deploy what you've been practicing and onboarding with. And you need to have the mindset of Kaizen, which is continuous improvement. If you don't make the sale, you need to recap before you make the next call and think, well, what did I do right? What did I do wrong? What can I improve? A mentor, if you got one, is certainly helpful in those regards. And just be committed to the process. This business is about for the first 90 days, the first 90 years of your career, it's about the inputs. The inputs being the calls you make, the presentations you make. If you just stick to that and follow your script as you're taught, you may not algorithmically get exactly two sales a day for every four presentations. But what you'll find is over the long haul, as you start to add the averages up, you will be consistent as long as you put in the time to make the dials, to get the people on the phone and Sell them.

I think that's huge. So like really just like focusing on the inputs, focusing on the things you can control. Right. You mentioned the training, you mentioned listening to your call recordings, like looking at what you're doing, doing the inputs and then not just doing them, but analyzing the inputs that you've done to see where you can have improvement and get better. Right?

Yeah. Think of, think of professional sports teams. You know, what do they all do? They play their tapes to review their plays and they play the competitions that they're up against. Right. And then they run those plays religiously to practice and fine tune them. That's what we need to do as agents as well.

Oh, 1,000, I think, I think that's massive.

And I want to kind of like, I guess not, not necessarily echo that, but just be a little more intentional with delivering that message. I see so many agents, you know, we, we've worked with over 800 agents, you've worked with over 5,000. I mean, it's no secret that, you know, between the three of us, we could probably show you just about every nook and cranny of the industry. Right. We've heard it all, just about. But I think what's so important about that is all the, all the people that I've seen fail, they never studied the, their plays, they never rehearsed their plays and they show up to game day, they get absolutely destroyed on the field. Tackled pile, you know, it's like, what do they call it, like a dog pile up or whatever?

Like rugby play or whatever where they're just.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a 40 dog pileup or whatever you call it. And then all of a sudden they wake up, bank account empty, you know, everything's going south and they're like, what happened? It must have been the leads, must have been the agency, it must have been whatever it is, whatever the nearest thing they can point to is. And I think if you can come into this business, especially if you're new, like I'm specifically talking to you if you're watching this, if you come into this business and say, I probably suck at this, I'm probably going to suck at this for a while and that's okay because I have the opportunity to learn. And if you pick the right people to learn from, then you won't suck. And that's okay because it's something new. Right? Even professionals coming from other industries where they've made six figures plus have struggled and failed out of this industry because they didn't listen, because they Wanted to be the top dog like they were in their old industry. I've seen that happen too. But I wanted to touch on that because I think that that was super valuable for me. That was what made me successful. Selling final expense. Same for Tim, same for you. You said you humbled yourself, came back and learned. What would you say is like the number one thing that you would have to learn getting into this? Not so much on the mindset, not so much on like the, the approach to the business, but like the number one skill set. Like actually in the phone call itself basically. Yeah. Maybe like something like a. Yeah, like one or two tactics type deal. Like I'm watching this and I'm like I'm gonna get on the phone, I'm about to get this, use this script that my upline gave me or whatever. I'm you know, bright eyed and bushy tailed. What is it that you would say? The one or two little tactics that I would dunno as a new agent would be.

Intentionally connect with the client would be number one and then number two. Always be explaining what to expect. Right. So these are kind of broad like suggestions. Let, let's, let's think tact tactically about it, connecting with the client. Tonality. Right. You want to mirror and match how they're talking. Right. You want to also ask them about their health, ask them about who they are and where they're from. Not just in the beginning and this is one thing we learned changing our script but throughout the call, you know, as they ask health questions, ask some questions about them, learn more about them. People buy from who they like. That's just historically the case. It's no different than it was 100 plus years ago.

Right.

And then what was the second one?

Brain freeze.

Which like setting expectations throughout.

Yeah, setting exercise. Yes, thank you, thank you. So you know, here's what we're going to do. We're about to get on the phone, we're going to do a 10 minute interview. They're going to talk with me first and then after that they're going to talk to you, they're going to ask for permission for your health and, and you know, just say yes to it. When they ask you the questions, if everything sounds good, say no. Does that make sense? So clarifying the expectations of what's to happen. Right. Like that's one example. But here's what we're going to do on this call. We're going to figure out if we're going to get you approved today or if there's an Option to take care of coverage for you. Does that sound good? Right. Are kind of trial closes in a sense, but also clarifying things, I think that's important to do over the phone because there's a generally heightened level of skepticism. Right. You know, who is this person? Even if you like them, who is this person? Really? So clarifying and making sure things are clear, really important. Being intentional about that.

I think, yeah, I think that's the best way to build trust and rapport. Like everyone's, you know, they, they first got into sales, they taught you the fort method. You like walk in, you know, oh, you know, nice dog or whatever, and then you talk about their, their job and then their, their, their, you know, hobbies, and then you transition into the sale. To me, that's the most awkward, obvious way of like building rapport. That's just very cringe worthy or I.

Think it works in person, but it doesn't work on the phone. Like, I think you have more of a chance to make it work in person, but over the phone, like, even.

Still, even still, when I go to the bank, you know, I'm trying to, you know, set up a bank account or whatever. And then the, the, the weird, like the guy who's trying to get you to enroll your money into Merrill lynch, he comes in, he's like, oh, it's. Those are really nice shoes you have. Like, it's just like, it's kind of gross because you know exactly what they're doing immediately. But what you described, like, the best way to build trust is just make a promise, deliver on promise. Make a promise, deliver on promise. And like, what you're saying, where you just make promises, we're going to jump on the phone, do, do an interview. Boom. Jump on the phone, do an interview. All right, I'm going to ask you a few questions. Ask me a few questions. Like just the little promise fulfill. Promise fulfill. That's the best trust. I think that's huge. Yeah, obviously, you know, you, you've been doing this for a while. You've seen a lot of new agents come aboard. You've seen a lot of agents fail. You've seen a lot of agents succeed. First, I want to ask you, like, because when I was first getting into this industry, like, the biggest question that I had was like, how much can I expect to make? What is the, what is the income potential? And also like, what can I make as a new agent? So if I'm a new agent getting into this first 90 days, what have you seen? Like, if, let's say I'm gonna do all, all the things you recommended. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna listen to my call recordings, I'm gonna study the script. I'm gonna be a freaking maniacal psychopath. As far as like diving into this and immersing myself. What do you think that type of agent could expect to make in their first 90 days?

Yeah, it's interesting. I would expect it's possible. If you do. Again, a lot of conditions here, right. If you do everything we described, there is going to be a learning curve. We've seen agents who are now writing 75,000 plus a month their first month. They write 25, which is still really good, but they progressively over months built up their skill set and work capacity to get to that level. Right. So I mean realistically from an income perspective, I mean I would say 5 to 10,000 in bottom line income somewhere in that range is very doable at the end of the first 90 days per month. If you follow all of these suggestions. I mean, in our, our freely program for telesales agents, our Average agent writes 19 to 20,000amonth. Right. So they're roughly making somewhere between that range. That's average. Right. There's agents better, agents worse too. So it is possible.

You know, that's. And that's just it, you know, how well are you going to follow that? That is the mystery. And I think the difficulty of this business is that it is simple, but it's so simple, it's complicated. Like yeah, agents all the time.

Smartphone, basically.

Yeah, I mean like I'm, I'm an example of that. But there's plenty of other agents. I've seen it. I can tell when it's happening too. It's like, like we'll have agents who, you know, we do a broker program. You know, the agents buy their own leads. But we've had agents leave the Freely program and we'll tell them, look, you understand what you're leaving as a full system that's helping you do everything and maximizing your results and, and they go do their own leads or buy their own leads. And for them, and I'm just relaying the free lead agents, a lot of them struggled because the system now is gone that was keeping them dialed in. The thing that they want, maybe more freedom or autonomy actually hurts them.

Yeah.

And we've seen vice versa happen on the other side. So it's, yeah, it's, it's an interesting thing.

If you're doing well, keep at it. And again, it's pretty simple business. Like you said it's about inputs and it's about doing that every day and being consistent.

Yeah.

What from, from all the people that have succeeded and all the people that have failed. What have you, what have you seen as like if I'm getting into this industry as a new agent, do this, don't do this. If you do this your chances of succeeding are high and if you do this your chances of succeeding are low. Are like those things that you see.

The common do work 50 to 60 hours a week. There's a correlation between the amount of money people make and the amount of time they put into it, right? No it's not industry what you say. Say it again.

Not a part time industry.

No it's not. We've moved away from that almost entirely. It's. It's for every part time agent that's successful there's 20 that aren't. You know it's just the way it is.

Don't do part time. Yeah we figure that one out too. Right do.

I mean that's pretty straightforward. Do have a system to put you in front of prospects predictably whether it's buying leads or getting leads for free. Like with us you got to have something in place that's going to do that because the pro leads are the lifeblood of your business. Without leads you don't have a business, even have a license or appointments. You're not in business without leads.

Yeah.

And and don't think that this is a get rich quick scheme. I mean it does take time. It shouldn't take too long to see some success but it does take time to learn, grow, get better. So don't be too hard on yourself but do put some standards in place. And I think that goes back to that. Put the time in because that's really where you're going to more quickly overcome the learning curve and higher possibilities of making more money.

100 I think that's awesome. Julian, anything to add to that? Any questions you have for Dave?

No, not really. I think that the big like the other biggest point of David's that I really want to highlight is the fact that like it really is not a get rich quick scheme.

A lot of like now granted if you don't make a sale in your first like 12 months, like if you work full time for 12 months and you don't make a sale that would be an example of what like it shouldn't take too long to see success would be. Right. But also like if you're not seeing sales in the first 12 months. And you. And you are studying, like, there might be a bigger problem at play here, but if you are studying, I've never seen it take that long.

Right.

And just being willing to listen to feedback from other people even if you don't like them. Right. Like, sometimes you don't. You don't like the person who's telling you that you need to be better and suck less because every time they tell you something, they tell you that you suck. But if you can look at it from, like a positive standpoint, you can see success. And ultimately, I think it just comes down to being patient for hitting your goals. It's something that I've had to learn. I've wanted to just, you know, wake up one day. You know what I mean? Like, you're sitting in Monaco or something. You're selling 40 apps a minute, right? Like, you just. You have these outrageous dreams and it does take time to get there.

It takes.

It takes time to climb the mountain, but then when you get there, it's. It's worth looking out over the. Over the valley. So I think that's a massive takeaway. Just being patient. But I don't think I have any other questions or anything. I think this is super valuable. Thank you for. For shedding that insight on there for us. Tim, you want to wrap this up here today?

Yeah, absolutely. So, Dave, for people that are watching this, you know, if they haven't seen you on YouTube, obviously, you know, you're pretty big there. How can they find you and how can they learn more about working with you?

Yeah, just put David Duford into YouTube or the dig Agency, you know, right here, and then you'll find all the content. Just start somewhere and go down the black hole of content and eventually you'll end up at my website, davidduford.com, where we talk about how our agency works. If you're interested in that, just feel free to check it out.

You changed your name on YouTube. What was the reason for that?

Yeah, it's a great question. More of a branding thing. Like, I. I don't want to be. I am the face. Like, Steve Jobs is the face of. What was the face of Apple, but he. It wasn't the Steve Jobs company. Right. Apple's more than just Steve Jobs. He's a part of it. Right?

Yeah.

So I'm no Steve Jobs, but, you know, I think my company shouldn't be the Dave Deford Company. Right. Because it's changed. Like, you know, a year and a half ago, we had no a. No, no employees. Now. We have three or four now.

Right.

You know, trainers point people that are really important to the processes. So it's, it's just a growth. I think it's representative of the growth and direction of the company.

100. Love it. Awesome. So digging David Duford on YouTube. Great content, great value on there. Got more videos than, you know, I've days that I've been alive. Honestly, it's insane how much, how many videos you have there on YouTube. So, yeah, awesome. Thank you guys for watching. Check out Dave, check out other videos on our channel and we'll see you guys in the next one. Take care.

See ya.