Andrew Lasky (00:00)
Everybody welcome to the commissions and cashflow show. I am your host Andrew Lasky. Today we have a very special guest, Charles Keller. Charles, welcome to the show, brother.

Charles Keller (00:16)
True, thank you for having me, man. I can't thank you enough for thinking of me. This is really cool to be a part of. And congrats on all the recent success as well and making the transition. And obviously all the exciting things going on with ⁓ the new deal in Boca and obviously getting started with your firm. It's exciting to see, dude.

Andrew Lasky (00:35)
Thank you brother, I appreciate that. And you've had a lot of recent success as well and that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So Charles, you're in virtual life insurance sales. Tell the audience a little bit about your background, how you got started and where you are today.

Charles Keller (00:52)
Yeah, so I recently made the transition much like you into a completely different field altogether. So ⁓ I was most recently in medical device sales as well. ⁓ I just recently started my own virtual life insurance brokerage essentially. It's called Fortress Life. ⁓ So Fortress is kind of the brand that I'm creating in kind of the life insurance, telesales or virtual sales space, ⁓ which is

just in the last couple of years become pretty prevalent and super popular in terms of like the extended like online communities. It's been one of like the more, I guess like popular and rising new disciplines to get into with respect to like remote sales or I guess like gig economy work or, you know, having the ability to kind of sell or sell what people think of as like high ticket ⁓ type products from anywhere.

So, ⁓ as far as my background and story, was kind of interesting how I kind of came back to this point. feels like a full circle moment for me. ⁓ Cause I've been in sales my entire career since graduating. I graduated from Arizona state in 2019. ⁓ And pretty much every job that I've had in the seven and a half years since I've graduated has been a sales job. So, ⁓ my first job upon graduation ⁓ actually was selling

life and health insurance, ironically enough. So I was a group benefits broker. So group benefits planning and consulting, which is essentially like the B2B segment of life insurance and health insurance. ⁓ Group benefits, you're essentially an insurance broker for small business owners and helping them put together their employee benefits plan. ⁓ their group medical plan, you know, the accident and dismemberment.

kind of supplemental insurance that you elect for when you go through open enrollment with your company, the life insurance obviously component of that. So my first job upon graduation was selling life and health insurance. I was just doing it to small business owners, CFOs of mid-size companies, 50 to 200 employees. And that was obviously in 2019. So within eight months of starting my first job out of college, COVID happened. So being in a B2B,

sales job was something that kind of forced me to transition just with the world shutting down. A lot of small business owners were furloughing employees, completely cutting their workforce in general. And the world was shut down. A lot of companies didn't know if they would be operational ⁓ in the following years. So ⁓ made a really tough decision to transition into a completely different space at that time as well, much like I just recently did.

I went from being a group benefits broker to a mortgage broker or a loan officer. So I transitioned from group life and health sales into mortgage lending, which in 2020 and 2021, as you obviously know, being in the real estate market at that time, rates got dropped to the floor. was like, basically all you had to do was pick up the phone and you were able to make like 30, 40, $50,000 a month in, uh, in just pumping cash out.

refis to residential mortgage borrowers. So that was like kind of a gold rush period that I just saw a ton of people that were in my peer group making obscene amounts of money ⁓ and just showing me pay stubs for like 30,000 and $40,000 months. And these were guys who, when we were in college together, like they were working ballet, hustling, like working at a golf course or doing whatever else. And I was interning at Merrill Lynch and ⁓

a really popular REIT that was in Arizona called Coal Capital, which I had interned at. So I was in kind of what I thought of as like the high finance space. But I had friends who were coming up to me and mortgages showing me insane pay stubs and income that they were making. So I transitioned into mortgage, which was a kind of short lived chapter just because rates went from like two and a half percent to over seven in the course of like two quarters in 2022. So

spent less than two years in that industry as well. And then I ultimately made the pivot into medical device sales. ⁓ and so medical device sales was obviously again, kind of what we think of as ⁓ a real cream of the crop type sales profession. ⁓ you know, very high, high pressure, high risk, high reward type of sales job where it's a, you know, multi hundred thousand dollars sale and transaction that you're facilitating. So obviously it's, you know,

kind of one of those, you know, much sought after types of sales, ⁓ jobs to have. ⁓ but really kind of as we've gone through like the last couple of years, just with kind of being on the tail end of what I felt like was kind of a really unfortunate market cycle that we all kind of got caught with, ⁓ me, especially just being kind of right out of college when I feel like the downslide kind of started. So

⁓ Navigating the different sales jobs that I've had has been an interesting process as I've been trying to get my feet under me since graduating now seven years ago. ⁓ what brought me to the life insurance space was this idea of my entire career, really my sales I felt like were obviously, first and foremost, a result of my direct action, but also a lot of what is dictating your success, regardless of the sales profession that you're in.

is the stage in the cycle that we are at for most people, right? Whether you're selling, you know, like in my case, health insurance to small business owners who are, you know, dealing with, you know, COVID or contractions in the economy or, you know, not being able to operate or, you know, mortgage lending, which is directly tied to the 10 year interest rate, right? Almost to a T, you know, it's one of those boom bust types of professions and, ⁓

sales jobs where it's completely dictated by the stage at which you're at in the cycle. And then medical device sales is kind of in that same category. When you have a multi hundred thousand dollar sale, ⁓ you are at the mercy of a lot of times capital markets, right? It's really more so of a challenge of finding a creative solution to finance the deal rather than it is to even sell it. Right. So those are all things that I just kind of in my brief

Andrew Lasky (07:32)
Uh-huh.

Charles Keller (07:38)
time of learned experience up to this point. Those have really been the things which led me to want to start a path in an industry that I felt like was defensible and that had truly zero demand constraints, zero limit on the opportunity that you can create for yourself. And that was ultimately what led me to life insurance this year.

Andrew Lasky (08:00)
Yeah. So let's, let's dive into that. So you graduated college, you then was doing life insurance, but it's different from the life insurance that you're doing now. So tell the audience, what is virtual life insurance and like virtual life insurance sales job. And how is that different from the previous role that you had?

Charles Keller (08:20)
Yeah, so with kind of the new era that we're in in life insurance and kind of the new virtual life insurance sales kind of gold rush that has been going on the last couple of years. ⁓ The life insurance that I sell now is individual life insurance. These are people who are, you know, normal, ordinary, everyday people, you know, most of which are either, ⁓ you know, looking for a life insurance policy to cover.

final expenses like a funeral or a cremation or end of life arrangements, or they're looking to ⁓ get a life insurance policy in place to basically cover assets like a mortgage or to replace income to pay a mortgage in the event that they were to pass away. Or they're simply looking to do legacy planning and kind of create what is essentially an immediate estate. That's essentially what a life insurance policy is.

when you purchase life insurance coverage, you're establishing essentially what is an immediate estate for your family that's going to be passed on to them when you do die. So on the individual life insurance side, what drew me to virtual life insurance sales was the fact that it is absolutely without a doubt in my mind, ⁓ the lowest demand constrained industry that is out there. ⁓

Andrew Lasky (09:45)
Why do you think that?

Charles Keller (09:47)
So a couple of reasons. with respect to life insurance itself, life insurance is one of the oldest industries that exists in our economy. And you see this with a lot of the big mutual life insurance companies. There's a ton of life insurance companies like the Hartford, Mutual of Omaha, Transamerica. These are companies that have been in business over 100 years, many of them since the 1800s. Life insurance was one of the first established financial services industries because ⁓

you know, ensuring a person or an individual is really a key planning point in anybody's financial picture. And when you look at what is business at its core, right? Business is essentially a three-step process of marketing and lead generation to ultimately say what we know as sales or, you know, closing sales. then obviously being able to

⁓ deliver fulfillment of that product or service. So with respect to kind of the market of life insurance, every single person who is alive in this country needs a life insurance policy in one form or fashion. When you pass away, someone you love or your spouse most often is going to be planning for end of life arrangements, whether it be a funeral or cremation or simply just transition of assets, that's probably going to be anywhere from at minimum

a 15 to $25,000, you know, windfall, right? Average cost of a funeral, depending on the state that you're in, is anywhere from 15 to $18,000, depending on the arrangements that you do. ⁓ You know, things like, you know, probate and estate taxes, right? These are all things that we don't really think of. Even something as simple as, you know, your spouse or, you know, your loved ones or your children having to take, you know, say two to four weeks off of work.

to grieve and plan your end of life arrangements. So even for something as simple as like a couple of months of income replacement, every single person who is walking around has a need for a life insurance policy. Even your children, if God forbid they were to pass away, you would need to obviously be able to give them a dignified and proper burial or kind of celebration of life, whatever you kind of refer to it as. But every person that exists in our economy has a

a need for life insurance. That's why it's a $1.4 trillion a year industry. Now, with respect to like kind of how the actual, I guess, dynamics and factors of the business work, when you have a conversation with someone about a life insurance policy, particularly on the individual side, you are able from, you know, the start of your conversation to about 30 or 40 minutes after that, go through an entire medical interview with them, obviously kind of create a solution for what it is that they're trying to accomplish.

with getting life insurance coverage on themselves. And then with most of the insurance that we write and how I've structured my business and the types of policies that my team and I sell, we are selling what's called simplified issue or in some cases guaranteed issue life insurance, which has zero medical exam. There's no kind of like multifactorial process where things can ultimately fall through or go wrong. You essentially attach their medical records from the medical information bureau. send that ⁓

application to the home office of the carrier for review, many of the products that we write have an instant approval. So from the time that you pick up the phone and have a conversation with a client to the time that you get their ⁓ application submitted, that policy is being issued that exact day. And then you're getting paid anywhere from like two to three business days later.

Andrew Lasky (13:34)
Interesting. So you're using their previous medical history to get these policies?

Charles Keller (13:41)
Yeah, so something simple like what's called a final expense policy. Final expense policies are basically, it's a small life insurance policy, whether it's a whole life or term life policy. Final expense is usually a whole life policy. ⁓ And usually it's anywhere from like a five to a $50,000 life insurance policy. These are very small amounts. Most people have $50,000 in life insurance coverage. 100 % employers sponsored through their medical plan at work.

or their benefits package at work rather. So because it's, you know, generally speaking, even, you know, up to $500,000 in coverage, there are certain carriers and certain life insurance products that are called simplified issue. Just with a simple review of your medical record, which is just essentially, you know, requested using your social security number.

Yeah, there are many life insurance companies and many products that they have in their portfolio that will issue a life insurance policy with no physical, no blood test, no urine sample. Just by reviewing their medical history on their medical record, they're able to issue them a life insurance policy.

Andrew Lasky (14:53)
Is that going to be

more expensive for the client? Cause I remember when I got life insurance and I actually bought it for the infinite banking concept, which, know, too much to go into in this episode here, but I had to do a blood test. had to do a medical exam. So am I, my rates pretty good and I get to have to use the money. But as far as the type of policy that you're issuing to your clients, does that raise the price a little bit? Is it more expensive?

Charles Keller (15:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

⁓ It really can depend on each individual client because really what is determining your overall rate is like your risk classification and a lot of these products, like I said, because they are in smaller denominations as far as the overall risk assessment that the ⁓ life insurance company is making, their underwriting is incredibly sophisticated where based on just kind of your demographics, they are able to make essentially a value judgment as far as what your overall, you know, monthly premium should be.

I'm obviously not going to speak out of school like I have an extensive underwriting background because I don't and I honestly don't know all the nuances of really kind of what goes into the pricing ⁓ of a client's premium from top to bottom. yeah, generally speaking, just based on the risk classification and the cohort of people that they are essentially assessed into by the life insurance company, they can determine essentially what's like a table rate or a table rated premium for.

that individual based on primarily their age and their health. ⁓ So yeah, with life insurance particularly, obviously in your case with infinite banking, what's an IUL or an indexed universal life policy, or certainly with policies that have death benefits over $500,000, medical exams are very common with a lot of medical or with a lot of life insurance in general, medical exams still are very much common.

Andrew Lasky (16:24)
Mm.

Charles Keller (16:47)
But the way that we've structured our business and the way that, you know, in the, I guess, structure that I exist under is really designed for virtual and telesales where you can obviously have a conversation either over Zoom or over the phone. And you can get a policy issued without having these multiple factors that you have to account for. And this is, like I said, really what kind of drew me to the business because really I just wanted to, after, you know, after over, you know,

half a decade in sales and really kind of finding my cadence as far as what my strengths were and where I wanted to kind of play. Having a very simplified and abundant industry was something that I was really seeking out. And something where, you know, as you move a deal through the pipeline, there are less factors and less points of failure in that process, right? Because obviously like how many times, like depending on the industry that you're in, whether it's, you know,

Andrew Lasky (17:40)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Keller (17:45)
medical device sales or car sales, right? ⁓ Even certain real estate, right? You have many factors that need to align in order for a deal to close, for a deal to pay, for you to be paid on a transaction. There's a lot of things that have to happen. With life insurance, it's a very simple conversation that you're having with an everyday individual that eventually is gonna have them select an amount of coverage that is best suited for them and their family.

that policy is going to either be instantly approved or declined and they're going to have paperwork in their mailbox and five to seven business days and you get paid in two to three days. That to me was just like a light bulb moment for me because like.

Andrew Lasky (18:25)
God.

Super quick sales

process, right?

Charles Keller (18:32)
Yeah. And like I said, really at every stage of the funnel, because it's like, you know, 350 million people here in America, every single one of them is essentially what would be your TAM, your total addressable market, right? Every single person needs a life insurance policy. Many of the people that I speak with and that I sell to have multiple. So there's obviously kind of the demand surplus that pretty much any entrepreneur or sales entrepreneur or salesperson would want to exist within.

You're in a target rich environment, you know, where you have unlimited swings of the bat that you can take. And then you have the actual sale on the transaction itself, which is a simple life insurance application that takes 15 minutes to fill out. And then how you get paid on the backend, doesn't matter who the president is. It doesn't matter what interest rates are doing right now. It doesn't matter what tariffs are doing right now. You know, you're essentially insuring.

the one thing that is closest to the individual, the degrees of separation are zero when it comes to your life, right? ⁓

Andrew Lasky (19:35)
I mean, look, everybody's

going to die, right? I think that's why it's such an indestructible industry. But there's something that you said earlier that I want to touch on. So you talked about the three steps in business, right? You talked about lead generation or marketing. You talked about sales. Then you talked about fulfillment. I want to start with just the first two right now. So in virtual life insurance sales,

How do you guys get your leads? Are you cold calling? Are you buying leads? Like how does this work? And like, who are you targeting?

Charles Keller (20:06)
Yeah. So, the way that we generate our leads with the structure that I exist with under. So, like I said, I have my own independent agency that I'm in the process of scaling, but I exist under an umbrella of what's called an insurance marketing organization or an IMO. So the insurance marketing organization that kind of runs the entire infrastructure of my business is a company called integrity. Integrity is who purchased Patrick Bette David's,

you know, agency, they're the largest insurance marketing organization in the country. Basically their job or they're the way that they make money is by selling their agents leads. It's essentially like, you know, similar to how like certain brokerages right in real estate have like a, you know, kind of, you know, services model that is set up where, you know, the brokerage is essentially providing you with the infrastructure to run your business. But as a CRE broker or whatever it is that you're, doing in real estate.

You have essentially full ownership and autonomy over your client book. And you take obviously the lion's share of the commission with respect to the business you generate, because ⁓ we are purchasing leads from the insurance marketing organization.

Andrew Lasky (21:19)
Gotcha. So tying it into like real estate. So if I'm going out and I'm looking to purchase a property, obviously I want to get a discount. I'm looking for homeowners that maybe are late on their taxes, they're going into foreclosure or whatever the case may be to get me a discount. When you're purchasing leads for life insurance, are there specific demographics that you're targeting that might be a little bit easier of a sale or how does that work?

Charles Keller (21:48)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So there's a lot of different lead vendors that are out there now. Life insurance lead generation is a very, very hot kind of sector of like what is known as the digital marketing space. So yeah, there's different lead strategies that you can run depending on really kind of the strengths of your selling style or how you really want to design your business and the types of clients that you want to deal with. A very common one, like for example, is mortgage protection.

So these are oftentimes people who are in a demographic of 30 to 50 years old, still full-time employed. They have a mortgage, right, that they're looking to get a life insurance policy to protect in the event that they were to pass away unexpectedly. So mortgage protection, for example, you probably got a ton of mailers in the mail when you purchased your primary residence about mortgage protection. ⁓ It's a very common.

type of life insurance lead where these are people who have filled out a form or responded to an advertisement ⁓ regarding mortgage protection with the sole purpose of getting a life insurance policy in place. It's usually a term life insurance policy on a 30 year term to coincide with their mortgage. And you can even design the policy to have a decreasing death benefit to essentially adjust downward with the mortgage balance as the mortgage is paid off over time. And a lot of times these are, you know,

life insurance policies that have what is called a return of premium or an ROP where at the end of 30 years, if they do not pass away, if they pay the home off in full after making that 360th ⁓ life insurance premium payment, they will ⁓ recoup 100 % of the nominal premiums that they had paid into the policy.

Andrew Lasky (23:35)
Gotcha, so you have other

companies that go out there and seek information or seek intake forms from potential life insurance buyers. They then sell those leads to you and then you go and you cold call them. Now, are you calling yourself or do you have an appointment setter? What does that part of the process look like?

Charles Keller (23:54)
Yeah.

So as of right now, I'm still dialing them myself. So yeah, mean, it's, it is like, yeah, I mean, it is like a very high volume kind of cold calling style of sales. but obviously being that, you know, a lot of times, depending on the lead strategy that you're running, these are qualified individuals who like understand why you're calling at the very least, or even if they're not able to get coverage, at least they expressed interest in what it was that you were reaching out to them for. So, ⁓

You you obviously just like any telesales job or any type of, cold calling scenario, you do get, get pushback and hangups and all of that stuff. But generally speaking, these are people who have responded to a life insurance form or started an application online, or at the very least we're curious about getting, ⁓ quotes for life insurance. And yeah, so the way that the insurance company or the insurance marketing organization that I work under kind of does it.

They've even taken it a step further where they handle all of the state contracting with negotiating with mutual of Omaha and, you know, all of the different products that we write in a given state. So we have like a broker suite of services. And then we also have like a lead portal. They generate money by selling us leads and providing the, you know, agent services and suite of services and products that you need to run your business. But as an independent 1099 agent.

I get to be the agent of record of all of my clients. I maintain all of my renewals. I have a hundred percent commission on all of the business that I write. So it's kind of like the EXP realty model. If you're familiar with like certain, and even like Keller Williams, I know has like an age, like a, you know, referral program and all of these types of structures are starting to pop up as you see, like the atomization of like our economy. Now that people can spin up, you know, people are the new businesses, right? Like,

Andrew Lasky (25:28)
Is there?

Charles Keller (25:45)
you know, with all of the technology that's at our disposal and the way that you're able to obviously, you know, run a lean operation and process. ⁓ Yeah, they, make way more money by selling us leads than trying to, you know, I guess have like a 60 40 or some sort of kind of, you know, traditional, you know, commission rev share or commission split type of structure.

Andrew Lasky (26:09)
So they just specialize in finding the lead and tossing it to you and they get their money. Now it's your turn to make money. So when you go and you call these leads, how many times are you going right into the sales process on the initial call? Like do you set up a meeting or is it right then and there?

Charles Keller (26:26)
In an ideal scenario, it's a one call close. So like there are certain types of life insurance policies like IULs would be a perfect example. ⁓ Where a lot of times because there are nuances to how you would structure the policy depending on what they want their death benefit to be in their cash accumulation strategy for their infinite banking that they're doing or whatever it is that they're getting the IUL for. ⁓ That oftentimes is a two or three touch sale, right?

But something simple like final expense, is a simplified issue, they're just looking for, it's someone who many cases is in their 60s or 70s, they've aged out of their employer sponsored life insurance, or they can't any longer get a term life insurance policy at 10 year, 20 years or 30 years, because those term out at age 75. So they're simply looking for a whole life insurance policy with like a 20 or $25,000 death benefit.

to be paid to their spouse when they pass away so that their spouse doesn't have to go into debt to put them in the ground. Very simple transactional policies like a final expense policy. You're really just positioning yourself as an underwriter through the state who's looking to help them understand better about what types of burial programs and life insurance policies they can put in place for final expenses and end of life planning.

Andrew Lasky (27:27)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Keller (27:49)
that oftentimes is a one call close, a one and done sale. But then you have, yeah, you have what are called advanced markets like IULs and annuities where it's a much more consultative process for developing a specific strategy and designing that in a certain way and arriving at what is an appropriate monthly commitment and price. ⁓ So yeah, there's a lot of different, there's a lot of gray area obviously in between those two extremes as well.

Andrew Lasky (28:18)
Are you selling multiple products to certain clients or is it mostly just like one product?

Charles Keller (28:24)
Most of the clients that I've done business with thus far, it's been a single policy. ⁓ But yeah, the idea with this business, it's very common because obviously being in this fully 100 % independent model where it's 100 % commission, there's no real guarantee of income. You also have to make a commitment to invest in your business with purchasing leads. So I actually was spending money initially when I got into this business, ⁓ asking for referrals and developing a referral business is like...

a huge X factor in kind of the outside success that I see some agents have versus others. So yeah, repeat business is definitely something that you want to try to foster. But yeah, the majority of what I've sold thus far just in the first four months of first quarter of opening my agency has been primarily on final expense and mortgage protection.

Andrew Lasky (29:16)
Yeah, because I'm just thinking about it right now. I feel like when you're first getting started, you're going to spend a lot of money to purchase leads. But as you get more and more sales, you can now ask for more and more referrals and your cost per acquisition is going to just significantly drop. So is that what you're seeing right now in the four or five months that you've already been doing virtual life insurance sales?

I think I lost you brother.

Charles Keller (29:57)
Yeah, sorry,

can you?

Huh. That's super bizarre, I don't know why.

Andrew Lasky (30:11)
It's all good, we'll be able to cut this part out.

Yo, it's saying on my end to close all apps and tabs and start over.

So get out and then come back in.

Charles Keller (32:00)
All right, can you hear me okay now?

Andrew Lasky (32:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all good. It's all good. We're going to be able to cut it out. So I'm going to start back to where we were about how I was going to transition from, what was I saying? about like paying for referrals, getting to that point. ⁓ So yeah, man, it seems like, you know, in the beginning when you're starting your business,

Charles Keller (32:04)
Sorry bro, I don't know what's going on with the technicalities here.

Yeah.

Andrew Lasky (32:29)
You're buying leads, that's obviously costing you a lot of money. Your cost per acquisition is high, but as you start to make more more sales, your cost per acquisition dramatically drops because now you're asking for more and more referrals, correct?

Charles Keller (32:45)
Yeah, I mean, that's really, I think the bread and butter of like a lot of agents that I see that do exceptionally well in terms of their profitability is that they have a polished system for generating referral relationships. ⁓ That's a great way to obviously reduce your lead spend because initially when you get into this space, like for example, like when I left my medical device sales job, I mean, not only was

not making income. It was like I paid about $600 for three state licenses. It's like $50 to take your exam and then each state license is anywhere from like 150 to $200. So was $600 in on state licenses and then I had to spend, you know, another $500 on my first lead list. So by the time I even made one call or even really started, I was in well over $1,000 with the software and other things that I

to set up my business. yeah, mean, finding a way to become profitable in this business is ⁓ really the whole game. When it comes to independent life insurance brokerage, it's finding a lead strategy where you can convert at a high level, which everybody has kind of a different formula. Everybody works different types of leads, I would say, and no two agents are really the same. But from my standpoint, like I'd said, from simplifying the process,

Andrew Lasky (33:51)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Keller (34:12)
of those three facets of a business transaction, ⁓ being able to just swipe your card and purchase 100 qualified leads from a website and then just throw your dialer on and go, ⁓ it's a very frictionless industry. The most frictionless sales position that I think exists in our modern economy is being an independent life insurance agent.

Andrew Lasky (34:37)
And that's why so many people are drawn to this type of business model, which I want to get into next, which is the recruiting aspect of it. But before we get into recruiting, let's talk about the licensing because you brought it up before. How easy is it to get your license? How long does it take to pass the test on the first try?

Charles Keller (34:53)
Yeah.

It's super simple. So I usually recommend with like new hires that I'm bringing into my agency to give themselves 10 days to study and schedule their exam. Anything more than like two weeks of study, I would say is overkill. The life insurance exams, ⁓ the national state life insurance exam is like pretty simple. I mean, it's like, you know, the questions are very, simple. What is the difference between term life insurance and

Andrew Lasky (35:12)
That's crazy. Too weak. That's it.

Charles Keller (35:25)
whole life insurance, what is a primary versus a contingent beneficiary. It's mostly just like the basic nomenclature, like very simple test to take nothing like your real estate exam, obviously like your real estate exam or like a securities license, like what I used to have when I was in, you know, kind of blue blood finance before, like a series license or your real estate license are far and above more, more complicated and difficult to get. So.

there is still a barrier to entry, but the barrier to entry in life insurance really is just the license, which takes like two weeks. You know, I would say from the time you make the decision to sell life insurance to the time that you're actually on the phone selling is like just under a month. yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so it's a huge opportunity for that reason. Obviously you've seen thousands of these like virtual life insurance teams and agencies spring up.

Andrew Lasky (36:09)
That's crazy to me. Crazy.

Charles Keller (36:22)
Seems like everybody within at least one degree of separation now has a friend who's doing this. I've had multiple people reach out to me and obviously, kind of just wanting to know a little bit more about what I'm up to, but many of them who reached out about the life insurance thing already did because they know somebody who's doing it. So they kind of already knew kind of what the overall gist was, which is more of, like I said, of like similar to a brokerage structure, like you see a lot within real estate. I don't like to use this,

kind of phrase because I think it's really played out, like, you you eat what you kill. That is really kind of the truest sense of like how the life insurance space is designed now with this kind of virtual IMO model.

Andrew Lasky (36:57)
⁓ huh.

So let's talk about the team building aspect. Like I saw you transition from medical device to getting into life insurance. And bro, I'm not just saying this because you're my friend, but you came in and you started crushing it immediately. I saw on your Instagram, you were getting sale after sale very, very quick. For somebody that's looking to get into virtual life insurance sales, is that typical?

Charles Keller (37:32)
⁓ I don't, yeah, I like to say, I definitely think it's, of all of the people who get into life insurance, it's certainly maybe not typical because tens of thousands of people do, but it's typical in kind of the world that I exist within. I've seen tons of people, people who are in kind of like my extended, you know, peer set and people, other people who are scaling agencies along with me. ⁓ Yeah, a lot of them have found pretty significant success early on.

a couple of people in our agency who wrote, you know, almost $50,000 in business in their first month on the phone. So yeah, there's a ton of people who do exceptionally well. It's like I'd said, if you really, think the only thing that really kind of, you know, I guess can derail you or stand between you and obviously finding success in this business, I think is just a lack of belief.

in terms of kind of what the opportunity affords. ⁓ Because really the only thing standing in between any life insurance agent and insane numbers like writing 40, 50, 60K, 100K a month in premium is really just time spent on the phone and lead spend. So like I said, because of how this business has been simplified to just simply have an ecosystem that you can purchase leads from that have already

gone through the process of, you know, in some cases, filling out several medical questions, designating a beneficiary. These are very qualified and highly scrubbed leads that you're having the ability to just pay, you know, 20 bucks or 30 bucks a lead for and purchase a list for four or 500 bucks. And then in ⁓ a week, in a day, I've seen people with their last hundred dollars in their bank account after getting licensed spend, you know,

you know, their last money on a lead list and then multiply it into, you know, several thousand dollars in commission and now they're in the game. So yeah, I think it definitely goes on a case by case basis. It's, it's more common than I, than I would, you know, than I would say. A lot of people have found pretty profound success very quickly in life insurance, which I think is why it's drawing a lot of people.

Andrew Lasky (39:35)
Mm-hmm.

That's awesome.

And so would you say that if you're not successful in this business, it's just simply the fact that you're afraid to pick up the phone, face a little bit of rejection?

Charles Keller (40:03)
Yeah, I think if ⁓ you're having trouble in sales, particularly with having a ⁓ consistency in closing rate, a lot of times it's not as complicated of an equation as we would like to think. I used to be very romantic about telling myself a story as to why a prospect did not buy.

Again, going back to kind of that multifactorial process of really understanding all of the things that need to happen in order for a transaction to take place. Oftentimes you just need to increase the ⁓ strike zone. You just need to give yourself more opportunities to find someone that all of those boxes check for, that all of those factors align for. So yeah, mean, especially with life insurance because it's such a distilled version.

Andrew Lasky (40:51)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Keller (40:55)
of like a product or service. It's very, very straightforward. You're buying life insurance on yourself. You're buying insurance on yourself. like, it's a very simplified kind of conversation for a lot of people who spend time in learning a script. And then from there, yeah, it's absolutely, I don't usually like to say that sales is a numbers game, but it is at least in part a numbers game. Because I think a lot of the inconsistency that people find when it comes to closing percentage.

or their overall deal volume. ⁓ Volatility is in most cases a function of low frequency. And that was something that I heard from Alex Hormozi actually just recently in a podcast that I was listening to, it kind of reaffirmed it for me, which was like, if you have an agent or if you have a medical device rep or if you have a real estate agent who makes a hundred phone calls.

And you know, they make a hundred phone calls a day and they might make one sale, you know, every few days or maybe one sale a week or every other week. And oftentimes the only thing that is standing between them and outside success is not from, you know, modifying their script or tweaking and, and, and doing different things in their approach or in their, in their, I guess, close or overcoming objections or whatever kind of the science of

of the sale you get into a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say if they, yeah. Right. Exactly. If they had just made 300 phone calls instead of 100, they would have been selling a policy, like one policy or one deal or one sale a day rather than one sale a week. It's, it's a very simple equation of one of the, um, one of the first

Andrew Lasky (42:22)
It's just minimizing the time between the next call.

Charles Keller (42:45)
I guess, mentors or guess managers that I really had was a financial advisor that I was working for at Merrill Lynch when I was interning in college. And I was cold calling for one of these financial advisors who was at one of the top private wealth teams in the office in Phoenix in Arizona, where I went to school. ⁓ Sales equals one over N, right? And N is the amount of, the amount of dials or outreach or prospects you.

reach out to the amount of asks that you make. Your sales is simply a function of one divided by the amount of calls that it takes to make to get one sale. So you have to find your end. Like for me, for example, my numbers, at least within the life insurance game are, you I make anywhere from typically 300 to 400 calls per day. Cause I have a software dialer that's just on a round robin that's able to automatically dial for me all day.

would literally be physically impossible to do by dialing by hand. But at three to 400 calls per day, I would say that is a pretty good system for getting to what we call connections or contacts. ⁓ Typically if you make 100 calls ⁓ or 300 calls, you'll get five contacts, which you typically will need five contacts.

Andrew Lasky (43:42)
Mm-hmm

Charles Keller (44:10)
to get one presentation, if you can sell one out of every five presentations that you make, then you will be very, very successful. That's like kind of the numbers. So most people think that they just have to make like three or 400 dials to make a sale. When in reality, that number is like 1500. Like if you're having inconsistent results, if you are not closing at the ratio that you want to, or that you're not making as many sales as you would like,

Andrew Lasky (44:29)
Yup.

Charles Keller (44:40)
you're most likely just simply not doing enough. Like activity.

Andrew Lasky (44:43)
Mm hmm. But Charles,

if someone wants to join your agency, you pay for the leads for them, you give them a script, and you have the software that dials three to 400 dials a day. It's that easy for somebody that wants to come on in and join your team, or do they have to buy their own leads? What does that look like if someone wants to join your team?

Charles Keller (45:04)
Yeah, so the way that it works just in the structure that I exist within and the way that I've designed my business is that ⁓ for agents that are looking to join my agency at Fortress or join our sales team that we're in the process of building is you would essentially come in and pass your licensing exam, which my team and company takes care of all of the licensing, the study materials.

Getting you prepared to actually pass your state licensing exam and get your life insurance license to get you into the game and then from there Just based on how You know the variations and how people want to set up their own business and the types of you know strategies that they want to run They purchase their own leads they purchase their own calls software Whatever strategy it is that they you know decide to ultimately run is is kind of their own prerogative but we have a step-by-step blueprint from how

I learned from my mentor and the other people who are in the space that I got into it with and, you know, over a hundred agents in our extended family of agencies that I work alongside, that we have pretty much ironed out every single step of every single day of the process from getting licensed to getting on the phones and then ultimately setting up your business for profitability and having a good spread on the growth that you're going to create by hiring new agents yourself.

⁓ but yeah, I mean, it is something that we provide the opportunity in terms of paying for the license, exam or paying for the study materials for the license exam. And then from there, you know, it really is a self-employed journey for these people. You know, I always tell people when I'm, you know, inviting someone to join my team or, or, you know, hire them as a, as an agent. ⁓ you know, I always tell them like, I am not your employer. I'm not your boss. I'm not your superior. You are not my subordinate.

by going forward with this process and going into this industry, you are now in every sense of the word, an entrepreneur and a self-employed business owner. If you do not approach it with that type of urgency, if you don't approach it with that type of framing, ⁓ from what I found agents in this model, that's, know, a hundred percent commission, you know, full opportunity and capturing the upside of the sales that they make, but zero guarantee, right? You have to spend money every week.

to have the type of leads and the volume of opportunity that you're gonna need in order to be successful. So in every sense of the word, it is a fully self-employed endeavor. By joining Fortress or by joining my agency, you are becoming a self-employed business owner in your own virtual independent life insurance business.

Andrew Lasky (47:50)
That's awesome. So it sounds like there's a little bit of risk, but you mitigate that risk through having the systems and processes that you're passing down to those agents. And for them, the opportunity is unlimited. They just have to do the work, take the resources that you give them and just run with it. So Charles, that's amazing insights for the audience. I do want to move on to the final part of our show, which is called the final four. These are the same four questions that every single guest that comes on the show answers.

And the first one being, what is your favorite sales book or sales movie?

Charles Keller (48:28)
Yeah, favorite sales book or movie. I am not a big movie person, surprisingly enough. It's so funny, my friends and ⁓ family and girlfriend, all are like, yeah, I can't believe that you watch zero movies, nothing. I'm not a movie person whatsoever. Yeah, ⁓ so I don't have really any sales movies that I can even think of off the top of my head, but.

Andrew Lasky (48:44)
I'm the same way. I barely watch TV. I only two shows and that's it.

Charles Keller (48:55)
A sales book that really resonated with me was actually a book that you had introduced to me. It's a book by Jeb Blunt called Fanatical Prospecting. Incredible book and it really does distill it down and simplify kind of what we just talked about with respect to like activity. know, the best sales people that you and I both know from medical device and definitely the sales people that I know best in real estate and I'm sure the same goes for you.

Andrew Lasky (49:06)
Very good book.

Charles Keller (49:23)
are the people who have the highest work rate. Like very, very little goes into, think, determining whether or not a sale happens or doesn't happen that we control as much as we think. You know, it is just simply a game of having the necessary amount of conversations, doing the amount of outreach that is, you know, that is imperative to basically...

Generating a certain amount of revenue is very much just a numbers game. You have to make prospecting and outreach a Structured habit and a structured part of your day if you want to have any shadow of a prayer of being successful in any sales background If you are not picking up the phone if you are not having conversations if you are not fostering Conversations for the kind of you know serendipity of just a

you know, interaction to occur so that you can then eventually, you know, kind of solve a problem or have a conversation with someone that leads to an aha moment for them or, you know, really identifying what truly is a pain point for them. That all, if you boil it back down to just your simple habits, like what are the habits that I can, you know, kind of take on that are gonna, you know, basically increase those occurrences tenfold is

really just the simplest thing to do, which we all over complicate, which is just picking up the phone. It's crazy.

Andrew Lasky (50:52)
I don't

care how good you are in sales. If you are not obsessed with prospecting, there's no way that you're going to be consistent over the long haul. Question number two, what is one sales strategy or tactic that once you implemented completely changed sales for you?

Charles Keller (51:13)
Yeah, so there's a couple. mean, I think for me, definitely it was like just that simple behavioral switch of just like really wrapping my head around about how little I was doing when I thought that I was doing so much. Like if I made a hundred dials in a day, I thought that that was like hall of fame level activity when in reality it was like pretty much leading me down a path of sure failure. Like you are not doing nearly as much as you think you are oftentimes in any sales business.

Andrew Lasky (51:35)
Mm-hmm.

Charles Keller (51:42)
Sales affords you a lot of freedom and a lot of flexibility. And for that reason, a lot of people just don't have the habits or discipline, myself included sometimes, to do the daily behaviors that are gonna lead to outside success. So would say the strategy for me, which is like the easiest one that I've found to control is just every single day, five after five, was just saying that one of my old, the first.

first person who hired me into medical device sales and medical aesthetics, some of that we both know, Genesis Karma, he was really the first person to give me my shot in medical aesthetics and medical device sales. He had this like mantra of like, you five after five, make five, you know, cold calls, door knocks, pull five more doors after 5pm. And just the accumulation of those habits over time, over the course of an entire quarter or over the course of an entire year, just.

Just simply making five extra calls. Yeah. mean, that is literally if every single person did that, it was so funny. Cause at first I was like, whatever, that's like a cute, like, you know, saying, and, you know, it was great to like kind of rah rah together and like talk about, you know, kind of, guess, project that we are actually doing, you know, the extra mile every day. Like that was just something that, you know, I thought was just more of like a mantra than, than a real, you know, actionable insight. But if you really boil it down to it, like if you actually did it.

If you actually made five more calls after 5 p.m. every day and you just made it a non-negotiable habit of your day, I could probably say with 100 % certainty every single capital rep, every single medical device rep, every single real estate agent, if they made five more cold calls at the end of their day, every day, compounded over the course of a year, they would easily probably transact in another six figures in business, depending on their profession. So yeah, that's definitely the strategy is just do more.

Andrew Lasky (53:38)
Awesome, I love it. Question number three, what is your favorite purchase that you've ever made with a large commission check?

Charles Keller (53:46)
That's a really tough one. I'm not like a big like person that you know likes things like I'm not like a big things guy like I don't have like I'm not like into cars I'm not into like any type of like material things like I wear like the same five or ten like Lululemon and aloe shirts and shorts like every day. Yeah I was gonna say for me it's always a stock.

Andrew Lasky (54:11)
Could be an investment. Could be life insurance.

Charles Keller (54:15)
or like Bitcoin, like anytime that I had like a nice little sale and whether it was medical device or certainly when I was doing well in mortgages, for me it was buying companies. I know that sounds like almost like so ⁓ contrived just because I'm not by any stretch like some savvy investor, like hyper business person, but.

The things that I get like passionate about are like fanatical about when I think of like buying certain things, like I love like buying into like an investor story. like, you know, Coinbase was like the only equity in my portfolio that I had owned for like the last five years. And obviously there's been this whole like digital renaissance of like how money's changing and you know, that was like, like if people ask me like about what I had bought, like over the last like four or five years, was mostly just like Coinbase stock. ⁓

So like public public stocks are now my new thing is like Bitcoin. I'm just trying to stack as much Bitcoin as I can over over the long term. So very simple things like that. mean, ⁓ or, you know, if I was to be spending money on things outside of a business or investments, mean, I like taking trips more than I like getting, you know, certain things like I don't know if I'll ever own a Rolex or like a crazy sick watch. Like I just I'm not a big like

Andrew Lasky (55:16)
It's awesome. That's awesome.

Charles Keller (55:42)
I'm not a big per like big purchase guy. I like, but I do spend like an idiot when it comes to dinners and trips. Like dude, I'm like one of the worst probably. Like I am totally that guy who would like spend his last like a hundred dollars when I was in college to like split a bottle for one night with the boys like at, you know, corner section or some, you know, going away dinner or party that we were throwing like experiences for sure.

Andrew Lasky (55:49)
Your answers?

Charles Keller (56:11)
are things that I spend money on. So I've definitely taken some nice trips and done things after, ⁓ you know, big sales, but yeah, definitely just buying Bitcoin or taking a vacation.

Andrew Lasky (56:24)
That's awesome. And then my man, last question. Knowing what you know now, if you had to start all over again in sales, what's the first thing that you would do?

Charles Keller (56:35)
First thing that I would do if I was starting over today, super cliche, I don't like to say that I have like no regrets, because I feel like everybody can think of probably one or two that they would have like in their career. But for me, especially being at the position that I'm at now, where I've kind of made this full circle moment back into the life insurance sales space, after starting in that space when I first graduated from college, I think it was necessary to like kind of learn all of the lessons that I learned in being a mortgage broker.

and being a medical device rep ⁓ and being at all of the different companies that I've been at, because I don't think that I would have the same conviction and certainty in pursuing the path that I'm pursuing now as the right path for me. So I would say just from the outset, if there was one thing that I could do differently in starting over, the first thing that I would do when I was starting over ⁓ would be to

probably find the exact person at that point that I was ⁓ most wanting to be like and then going and working for them. I know that was a super cliche thing for me at the time because I heard like, you know, certain people like Gary Vee say it and like other like business, you know, minded people say it like, you know, go seek out the person that you want to live their exact life or you want to follow their exact path and go work for them for free. ⁓

Like I wish I would have like when I first graduated college at Arizona State, instead of local, ⁓ like staying in the Valley, I wish I would have like just gone and done like a one, like a side quest, trying to get a job, like running coffee for some like, you know, business person that I admired, ultimately would have changed over time. But ⁓ that would have been the one thing that I would have done differently is I would have.

I would have not thought that I had to get right to making money so fast. would have probably ⁓ taken one more Hail Mary type experience and just gone and done something completely off the track of what I would have otherwise ended up doing.

Andrew Lasky (58:46)
That's awesome.

Yeah, I talk about it a lot. It takes one person outside of your immediate friends or family to believe in you to really change your life. And, you know, if you go back and you find somebody that you want to be like, you want to emulate, you want to live their lifestyle, getting as close to them as possible and just not caring about the immediate money can take you places that most people will never ever get to experience. So Charles, thank you so much for coming on the show, brother.

If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Charles Keller (59:17)
Yeah, no, thank you, bro. I appreciate you having me on and it was total honor that you thought of me and had me as a guest here. This is awesome. ⁓ Best way to reach me, I would say is usually ⁓ Instagram. It's Charlie Keller Worldwide as my personal Instagram and the ⁓ company Instagram for Fortress is Protect My Wealth. ⁓ You can also go to fortressagencies.com. You can fill out a form there if you'd be interested in joining as an independent agent and partner with my team.

⁓ yeah, probably, probably those areas I'm on all socials, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, ⁓ X, my X profile is, ⁓ at Fortress CEO. So yeah, you can, can get in touch with me. However, I'm not, not hard to reach.

Andrew Lasky (1:00:07)
Awesome, brother. Again, Charles, thank you so much for coming on the show, providing our audience with a lot of value. And I'll speak to you soon, my friend. Thanks again.

Charles Keller (1:00:14)
Absolutely