Today Renee is talking to Allan Khazak of Vroom Media Group.

He’s based in Canada and founded Vroom with the idea of helping insurance agents find prospects and convert them into clients. Khazak’s company specifically targets prospects for annuities.

As Allan says, “Energy is contagious.”

Which is so true of the insurance industry. Clients don’t just buy an insurance product they also buy YOU. The agent makes all the difference.

Find Allan at The Vroom Media Group  

Find Renee at Wiki Quoters

TRANSCRIPT

Host Renee: Let me do a little intro for you, Allan, you can see how well I did, and see if I got anything wrong and we’ll go from there. First, this is Allan Khazak and you are the founder of Vroom Media Group that you started in 2019. You were born to an immigrant family in Canada, and you are also a graduate of Schulich Business School at York University in Toronto. You’ve been interviewed all over the place, Allan, super impressive, Yahoo Finance and Thrive Global. So, in just a few short years, you have really made an impact, so tell me more about that and about your journey.

Guest Allan: Yeah, I mean… How far back should I go all the way to high school?

Host Renee: Let’s see, let’s start… You’ve got something interesting on your website.You started this because you were helping your uncle, and maybe you can start there, and how you worked your way into helping license insurance agents market and sell annuities, ’cause that’s really like… It’s hyper-niche and that’s what you do, and I think it’s fascinating, ’cause you’re helping a lot of people… I’m a licensed agent, so I know how difficult this is, and I’d like to use your service. So please tell us how you got on this Paleo.

Guest Allan: I started… Initially in my career in public accounting, I got my life in CPA basically. I come from an Eastern European family, and they always wanted me to be a professional, they really believed in education, so I wanted to… In college, I thought I wanted to be one of these professional jobs, like an accountant or a lawyer, actually, those were the two career paths I was considering, and my father is actually an account, and so when I graduated from college, I worked really hard in college, I got good grades, I spent a lot of time networking, and I was very fortunate that got a job at one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, and fairly early on, I realized I didn’t like the corporate world, wasn’t where I work really… Where I saw myself a long-term, I worked with great people, but I knew I was not gonna be there very long, and then after a couple of years, I moved on and I actually joined a local startup, and they basically sold tutoring services for kids in math English signs, those type of topics, and as I joined that company, I realized that if we wanted to grow, we really had to grow online, and I was the name of the game, right? And this was five years ago, and that was kind of my MBA or a boot camp in online advertising.

Host Renee: So kind when I joined the business, I took as much time as possible to observe as much information as possible, and then as we started testing new advertising channels, we started kind of dialing in and allocating more of our ad budget, and the business owner was re-investing really heavily back into the business, and that allowed us to grow it because once we knew our numbers, how much it cost us to acquire a… How many customers we were able to acquire, we were just doubling down on that and the business grow really rapidly, so that really became like my MBA and online advertising. And then one thing led to another. After that experience, I did some freelance consulting work, my uncle works in the insurance business, did some consulting work for him, then I picked up more clients in the insurance industry, and one thing led to another, and I… I got it, anybody client, I saw how well they were doing, they’re really open, opened in my eyes, and then I really realized that you really have to niche down because the person in this world who tries to be the master of everything is really the master… of Nothing. So for me, I realized I had to absolutely niche down, really niche down on annuities, and then we started bringing on more and more clients, and that was kind of the start really of my journey. Right, I hope that makes a lot of sense.

Host Renee: Yeah, that’s excellent. I love that you gave us sort of a lead up and so that people can see the step by step in the progression that you made, and it all sort of makes sense. And what I wanted to ask you, I remember many years ago, at least 20 or 30 years ago, I was briefly part of a company that was pushing buy term insurance and invest the difference in mutual funds, and that’s been the mantra for a while, right. And I do remember them saying that annuities were not a good investment, and even to this day, that philosophy seems to penetrate pretty deeply in the financial industry, so I’m curious… How do you handle that?

Guest Allan: Yeah, that’s an amazing question. And I talk about this a lot with current clients, even prospects, right. Unfortunately, annuities get a really bad reputation. There is a lot of negative publicity. It, there’s other finance celebrities like Dave Ramsey, who tends to trash do annuities, there’s also companies like Fisher investments, they also try to… Its there reality is the annuity products of 20 years ago are not the products of today, it’s like the parts of 20 years ago or not the cars of today… Now we have electric cars. They’re working on self-driving cars. Everything changes, and as the market, as more sophisticated the products have to become more sophisticated in every single industry to keep up with the trends, there’s a lot more fixed index inequity products that are available, most of the marketing we do is actually for fixed index annuity products, I think a lot of times, the variable of notes of the… I don’t wanna say old days about of 20, 30 years ago of the past… That’s the better way of putting it. I no longer the products of today, and I think when it comes to marketing, in particular, a lot of people are brainwashed by the media, they read articles, they Google annuities. They get a really bad reputation. It’s naturally gonna happen, but it’s very important for anyone, whether they’re actually talking to a potential client as an agent or they’re already exploring like marketing, it’s important to actually educate people on how the city products of today are very different than those of the past, ’cause that’s gonna help agents become a lot more successful, not just in providing value to their clients, but also in earning people’s business, because when you give people a lot of value, they naturally trust you a lot more and wanna work with you.

Host Renee: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. And for those people, a lot of insurance products as well as annuities are fairly complex, and so for people who are not familiar with it or perhaps newer agents. Can you explain the difference between what would be an old annuity from 20 or 30 years ago and how it’s structured nowadays?

Guest Allan: Yeah, the simple answer is, is the fixed index annuities, they limit peoples the downside, and they really give them the opportunity to participate in an overall market upside and different trends. So with what’s going on right now with the stock market volatility, the uncertainty, people wanna mitigate the risk, mitigate their exposure, right. And in persons or retirement portfolio, no matter how big or small, you wanna have a portion that’s allocated to save money, because you never know how the market is gonna perform, and the market average is out over time, with that being said in the last two, three years, it was overall a very strong market until maybe six or 12 months ago, it overall, during the pandemic, the stock market did better than than ever before, and naturally when things are really good, there’s gonna be a correction. Right, and a lot of times when it even comes to these potential clients, people who are 63, 64, they can afford to lose 20% or 30% in their retirement portfolio because they just don’t have that runway, right. So a lot of these products, they give people that protection and that insulation, and I’m not saying they need to put all their money in an annuity because they might need to tie up that money for five or 10 years or whatever that time period is, but at the same time, the real benefit is that they’re actually gonna protect their money, and a lot of times if people have 35000-700000 set aside for retirement, they don’t need that money right now, they’re still working their job for another three, five years. So a lot of times, those annuities and the big contrast is, Oh, I’m gonna tie up my money, but if you don’t need the money for another five years, ’cause you’re only gonna retire in five years, you’re way better off putting it there ’cause you’re gonna give protection you’re gonna get growth, you’re… May mitigate the downside. So I hope that really kind of gives you some perspective…

Host Renee: Yeah, that’s excellent. That’s great. Now, let’s get into exactly what you do with Room media, because you seem to have really nailed the pain points for insurance agents, the endless prospecting and trying to get people into that pipeline so that you have opportunities to continue to speak to someone, ’cause this is not an impulse buy, these type of products. So take us through the process. If somebody as an insurance agent gets into your pipeline, how does that work for them?

Host Allan: How does that work? If they choose to work with us. Yes, yes. Yeah, so what we do, we really focus on fixed index annuity marketing, like I kind of mentioned, I’m not a big fan personally of the variable of new any products, but with that being said, what we do is we do online advertising typically through paid social channels, for our clients… So what the reality is, right? Every agent needs More leads, they need more appointments, they need more conversations… Right, ’cause at the end of the day… It’s just a numbers game, right? And some people may not want to look at it that way, but in any type of sales are all like it is an insurance, it’s really important to have a full pipe line, not only is it good for you mentally, it’s good for you emotionally and financially, because if you have one person in your pipeline and that person doesn’t do business with you, there are gonna be a lot more desperate and energy is very contagious. Right, so what I’m a believer, and you need to build up a pipeline where you’re getting clients from as many channels as possible… Right, and a lot of agents actually struggle with the online side, a lot of times I talk to agents, they’re doing dinner workshops, they’re doing video shows, they’ve been published in a book, they’ve been published online in different publications, and these are all great channels and all marketing is is every marketing channel works in conjunction, so what we really do is niche and more online-based, so what we do, and a lot of times, I find that a lot of agents, they actually not only struggle in front of getting in front of new people, which is where we come in, but they also struggle to get in front of their existing customers and keep reminding them, because if you can really build a long-term relationship with your clients that they’re gonna send you more referrals, they’re gonna do more business with you, they’re gonna trust you more. It’s only gonna create a win, win it, and at the end of the day… So I think a lot of times they struggle with getting in front of their current customers, but they also struggle in sort of getting in front of new people who they’ve never spoken to before, and that’s really where we come in, we run ads targeting people who do not know like or trust these agents, we help them get in front of them, and like I mentioned, I’m a big believer in education when it comes to both annuity sales and the new Indy marketing, so that’s kind of an element that we wanna integrate into our marketing because at the end of the day, people don’t have misconceptions, they have cognitive biases about annuities, and we wanna make sure in our marketing… We’re addressing a lot of those points. I hope this is helpful.

Host Renee: Yeah, that’s excellent. It sounds to me like you might help agents maybe create webinars and email lists… Newsletters, is that the kind of thing that you do.

Guest Allan: We don’t really do webinars. We’ve tried to have a list.. They haven’t been as effective. Well, what we do is just mostly paid ads, we take people through what we call as a funnel, which really unleashes of steps that you wanna take people through to get to their desired down come, so we wanna take them through a series of hoops and heroes, the reason being is the more hoops than her, those people go through naturally, the more qualified are receptive they are to a conversation, and a lot of times I’ll talk to agents and the marketing they do, they’re giving people a free guide, free report, promising key people, the moon naturally, that attracts a lot of tire takers, pre-shares all of that, so we wanna avoid all of that because we only wanna work, or health agents work with more serious folks, that’s why in our funnels, we wanna make sure they are robust enough to really weed out a big chunk of those people, because I’m sure you get it, no, marketing process is perfect, but at the end of the day, like time is the most valuable asset for a lot of agents, and we wanna make sure that they’re using their time wisely so that they can be as effective and as profitable as possible.

Host Renee: Well, that’s excellent. And I wanna dig down a little more on the specifics because a lot of what you mentioned, I mean that I’ve had my own websites for a while, although I’m a fairly new agent, and so I’m trying to sort of transition my digital skills into attracting clients for insurance, but it sounds to me like you might be doing something a little bit different and more cutting edge, and can you drive down a little bit more with that so we can… Because a lot of what you mentioned, people are thinking, Well, yeah, I do that. What else now? It’s not working. What else can I do online?

Guest Allan: I mean, there’s a lot of people can do it. I’m a firm believer that if you look at marketing as one side that you’re looking at more marketing channels, you have the less dependent is your business on any one channel, and it’s only gonna help… Right, in terms of what we do is very specific. In terms of running ads, getting in front of a new type of demographic, if a new agent or even an established agent is doing some type of advertising and it’s not working for them, I always tell people, what is the root cause of the problem… Right, and there’s two things, they’re not getting enough appointments, and I always believe a good benchmark is If you’re not converting 20% of your initial first appointments in declines, there is probably some type of breakdown in the sales process, so if someone’s only getting five people on the calendar every month. And they can convert at 20%, which is an average rate that people should strive for, then they’re not actually getting enough at that because you should be doing… For options that If I have appointments a day, I talk to agents that get 10 appointments a day all the time, so if they’re only getting five appointments a month and they wanna beat their head and say, this marketing channel isn’t working, you need to double down more on that channel, and if you can… you need to look at other channels. Right, and that’s why in any successful agents marketing arsenal, they do have multiple prospecting channels right now… The other challenge that agents have is maybe they’re getting 50 appointments a month, which is a big, big sample size. It’s awesome, right? But they’re only converting two out of those 50, so in those instances, a lot of people need to set their ego aside, ’cause unfortunately a lot of people in this industry have really big egos and the egos are very toxic, they need set their ego aside and debug their sales process, whether that’s seeking help from a entire party, but at that point, getting in other 50 appointments to make force it, ’cause it’s not worth it, because even if they were converting their current people at 10%, they would already be getting five new clients a month, right. And I also believe on top of that, a lot of people have very short-sighted time horizons, plenty of our clients are maybe getting someone for an annuity or maybe getting them in for other products, like is term insurance, building that trust, because I’m a firm believer that the more… People buy from you because they know you, they like you and they trust you. And when it comes to annuities, their higher ticket items, naturally, the skepticism is gonna be high, and this is just across the board it, whether you like it or not, unless you’ve been featured on a number of radio shows and you have credentials that 99% of agents do not yet. The reality is, is you need to really work hard to earn people’s trust, that’s why they’re gonna work with you, right, so the past way or in trust is do some smaller business with them, give them value, right. So sometimes if you’re one of our clients, he’s absolutely crushing it on the annuity front, but not only that, he’s been able to… People get it to is get it to final expense term, all these products, because he’s able to uncover those opportunities by asking the right questions, so even if there is not an opportunity for annuities, a lot of agents are just looking for that one thing they’re looking for the quick buck. And they just wanna rent that business right away, but the more you can lengthen your time horizon, the more successful you will be because you’re really able to build relationships with people, you’re really able to give them value, you’re gonna get a lot more referrals down the road, ’cause people are enjoying the experience that they’re getting with you, so I think these are all things that I think agents we really need to look at, and a lot of them oversee… If that makes sense.

Host Renee: That’s excellent. That’s a great explanation. And I notice on your website, and I think you’re doing something that most other sort of the gen type of sites for insurance are not doing, you have a button specifically that says claim your area, and that’s how in the insurance agents when they buy leads, they’re wondering how many times this has been, these names have been sold, and I think you’re doing something very clever, so can you would take us through that on how you sort of control that and keep… So that it doesn’t get flooded and agents get these watered down leads…

Guest Allan: Yeah, for sure. It’s a huge problem when it comes to this industry. A one problem is shared leads, right? Yeah, it’s one of the biggest problems, and I’ve now noticed this, because a lot of these companies, they’re gonna send the same lead to three, five, seven agents, and at that point when multiple people are competing for the same clients, it’s a race to the bottom because they’re gonna go What the person who gives them the best sounding product, that’s actually the worst for them, and it’s the reality, because a lot of people, they think very short term, a lot of people want what sounds the best, and it’s actually usually the worst… The only place you find free cheeses in the most traffic. So it’s just the reality. Right, and what a lot of these platforms companies do is they’ll have one way, say, when people submit an application on that website, they then send it to three or five people, so we actually set up custom funnels for every single one of our clients, so we’re running them, from completely different websites, completely different markets, in order to maintain exclusivity for our clients, which is what’s allowed our clients to actually do very well, and they do a lot of referrals even from our clients coming to us is because we’re actually… We wanna provide that good experience by having custom funnels for everyone and marketing in different markets for everyone, maintaining that exclusivity, we’ve really been able to maintain that exclusivity for our clients.

Host Renee: Well, that’s outstanding. That’s really excellent, I love that. So it sounds like you’ve got a very good system in place, and so now it makes me think This might be exceptionally pricey, so how does your pricing work for individual agents?

Guest Allan: Yeah, we typically work with only established agents, sometimes, occasionally, we will bring on a newer agent, but most of our clients understand… Annuities paid very handsomely. Our average clients are writing cases in the 10 to 500000 range, and the tip typical comp… I’m sure you know. It’s usually 5-8%, right? I always look at my marketing as an investment, never an expense, and that’s what every intelligent business owner does as well, is in terms of our pricing, we don’t have plans where someone can only get two or three or five leads a month, we wanna work with people that are very serious about spearheading their growth, that are already consistently writing whether it’s 25, 10 million in annuity business a year, right. So they’ve already got their sales processes style then in terms of pricing, we have different cares, Our pricing starts anywhere from 30500 a month, and it can go up all the way to over 10 grand, but just depends on the type of volume. We do tend to see a fairly large percentage of our clients actually wanna wanna upgrade their plans, just yesterday, I got reached out by a fairly new client already wanting to upgrade his his tear, and I tell people, start small and then you can expand there, get your first couple of cases around your belt, get your feet wet, and the reality is with marketing, it only gets better over time because the more and more you do, the more practice you get, the more you’re able to hone in on your sales processes, make them better, and that’s actually another thing that we help agents with, so not only do we get them leads, we actually helped them with weekly sales training calls, so that they’re getting a lot more value from working with us because they’re able to convert their leads at a higher rate, they’re way more profitable working with us if they’re actually putting in the work, and they’re able to utilize a lot of these tactics for some of the other marketing they’re doing as well, right. Because it’s all the same, you should have a fairly consistent sales process…

Host Renee: Oh, that’s excellent. So do you ever work with smaller independent agencies and not just individual agents.

Guest Allan: We have all kinds of clients, people with all sorts of marketing budgets… We do work with some agencies. We’ve worked with some clients. It really varies, right? So for us, it’s about bringing on the right type of clients, I think the people who do well with us have a good positive attitude. They understand it’s a process. They’re willing to put in the work. The people I hate working with are people with big egos who think they know it, I’ll think the whole world revolves around them, so sometimes I hop on cost with potential clients, and they just… They think they know it all, they think they’re the best, they think the whole world revolves around them, and I’m really are working with those type of people, they are toxic. They usually don’t do well. Their ego gets in their way a lot, right. And I’m sure they know who they are, but sometimes they don’t, but I think the ego can destroy people, and it’s very important to remain down to earth at the end of the day, for us, it’s about working with clients that we enjoy working with. For myself as well as my team. And we’re pretty stern in terms of not wanting to work with people who are assholes, who think that they’re the best and… Or not. And some people come to me and they’re like, Oh, I’m the best closure and slide spread, and then I would work with them, and then these people were the ones that were actually struggling the most, and so it’s funny, but it’s just… The reality, I don’t hold back, I tell people everything as it is…

Host Renee: Well, yeah, that’s interesting, it makes me think, How does a call like that and when you realize you’re dealing with somebody with a big… How do you actually… How does it go from there? When you wanna say that, I don’t think so. How does that look for you?

Guest Allan: I make it clear to them. I tell them, I’m like, Look, I don’t think we should be working together. You’re not kind of seeing things in the way that we are, and it sounds like you know of it all… You’re already doing this well, I don’t think you need more marketing, you should probably just double down on what’s already working for you, and a lot of times these people, they don’t even wanna admit that they’re not happy with what they’re doing, ’cause they have this really high ego, and they can’t, you know, Father mentioning that, Oh, I’m not happy with what I’m doing right now, or I’m struggling here, and it’s very clear that these people just have this big insecurity that’s kind of boosting their third goal, if that makes sense.

Host Renee: Yeah, okay. Well, I only have so much time left here, Allan, but you mentioned earlier that energy is contagious and it’s part of the sales process, and clearly you have a ton of energy, and I agree with you, energy is everything without energy. Nothing gets done, so how do you keep your energy up and going and what does a day… Like with Allan, look like…

Guest Allan: Yeah, I think your physical health is a reflection of your mind, of your energy, so basically in the last year, I went through a big transformation from a health perspective, like I’m down… Or just over 50 pounds. Since last year, I started going to the gym, usually in the evenings, I go to the gym for around or and a half, I think that’s one thing getting in physical activity, the next thing is your diet, which has actually really helped me lose weight is eating right. And I know this is not a conversation about that, and Bono means a health expert, I just know a lot of times when you eat foods like carbs, foods with a lot of sauces, foods with a lot of sugar, they make you feel Drowsy tired and give you a bad energy. So I think it’s very, very important to have a really clean diet, eat good food, healthy food, a lot of protein, those type of things, because they really help, and like I said, a healthy mind, healthy boy is gonna lead to a healthy person, so these are very important.

Host Renee: Excellent. Okay, and just one last question. Where do you go to get your information? To stay on the cutting edge of all of this.

Guest Allan: A lot of things are part of masterminds, I spend a lot of money going to different events, meeting different people, investing in different courses, education programs, like I’ve probably in the last two years, spent close to maybe 60 grand on different types of education. Learning masterminds. So there’s a lot of things, and I actually think a lot of agents, they’re scared to invest into growth, but that’s actually how you grow, that’s how you love all up, right? I’m investing into different types of masterminds, learning different things, and at the end of the day, is it something I’ve realized and it’s really fascinating this, most sales people are doing the same job for 20, 30, 40 years, so they’re performing at the exact same level, if they can just get one or 2% better every single day, week or even month, that is only gonna compound. Right, so I think a lot of people need to really invest into their education, invest it into growth… Invest into different types of masterminds to surround themselves with people who are a lot better than that. So my Masterminds have tremendously helped me. Masterminds education programs. All of that.

Host Renee: Oh, that’s excellent. And just one last question. Who’s your favorite? Who is giving you the best tips?

Guest Allan: I don’t have a favorite, and it’s not the answer you want it… I think there’s different tips for everything, right, there’s different tips for sales, there’s different types for marketing, there’s different tips for building a business… For leading an organization, right. And as we grow, I have to become a different person to lead a team right now we’re a team of eight, we’ll definitely grow a lot more by the end of this year, so it’s important and to level up in all these areas, how to manage a team, how to handle lead people, how to motivate people internally to work harder, etcetera. There’s a lot of dimensions. It’s not one side.

Host Renee: No, that’s great, that’s a great answer. Ansell, thank you. I’m gonna have to leave it here, but I would love to revisit this in the future, and I will probably be using your services at some point, you sound like you provide a lot of value to agents, so thank you for the work that you’re doing, and thank you so much for being here and spending time. Yeah.

Guest Allan: Thank you for your time, I really enjoyed it. So thank you so much. Alright, thanks a lot.

 

Find Allan at The Vroom Media Group  

Find Renee at Wiki Quoters