Business Innovators Radio - Interview with David Denning, Co-Founder of Jumpstart Go

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

David Denning is the co-founder of Jumpstart Go, along with his wife and partner, Elle. They help insurance agents and agencies build a predictable pipeline without buying leads or cold calling. Their strategies focus on practical organic social media marketing, referral partner systems, and simple processes that turn content into conversations and conversations into clients. David and his team have worked with more than 1,000 agents across all lines of insurance, and they lead a Facebook group of more than 36,000 insurance professionals called “Marketing for Insurance Agents”. Their frameworks have helped agents take control of their own marketing & lead generation to scale more profitable and have fun being authentic at the same time. David loves enjoying every moment of life and enjoys pickleball, mixology, and traveling/working around the world with Elle.Learn more: https://jumpstartgonow.com/action-call/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-david-denning-co-founder-of-jumpstart-go

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us David Denning, who's the co-founder of Jump Start Go. David, welcome to the program. Thanks, Mike. It's a pleasure and honor to be.

here. Hey, so I want to talk all about what you do and how you do it and why you do it, but get it started first with your story and background. How'd you get into the industry of working with financial professionals in the insurance sector to help them succeed in their social media? So I'll try to keep this a little short and sweet, but actually met my spouse at 16 in high school. We started dating, married at 21 in college, both came from marketing consulting backgrounds. I went to Georgia Tech and she went to Skad, But we started working with insurance, real estate, tech startups, local mom and pop businesses, ran a lifestyle business from around the world, running it from the U.S.

Why I live in South Africa for two years, and then renting our place out, living in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and coming back and running kind of business just from all over. And about eight years ago, we met a third partner of ours who we ended up forming Jumpstart Go with, focus specifically to the insurance industry, working with agents, and agencies and financial advisors help them grow and scale through organic social media and leveraging strategic referral partners and really getting away from the smile and dial, or I call it the frown and drown of just calling leads all day. Yeah, right.

You know, I like that a lot because I've heard smile and dial for decades and decades, and when you're dialing, you ain't smiling. That's so frown and drill. 100% true. I mean, really? You know, you think about something. It's like, okay, let's talk to financial services insurance professional and say, here's how you can get more clients and you tell them make 100 calls a day.

Well, if someone was going to do that two, three weeks in a row, you're going to get new clients, but it's not going to last two or three hours. Well, and you're going to get burnt out because honestly, it's not even 100 anymore. Contact rates drop so low. People are doing three to 500 a day. And it's the exact opposite of what we're going to dive into and talk that I know you believe and I believe too. It's a relationship industry, especially when you get to like financial advisors and, you know,

huge decisions, huge money. It's brought around trust and authority and who you're willing. working with. And I can't think of a least amount of authority and trust than cold calling up a lead or someone in trying to get them to trust you with their money. With their money, their insurance. And the minute you say the word, it's like, I got that. I'm good. It's like, wait, hold on. But you don't realize there's living benefits. There's all the things. You don't get past square one at all. So let's talk about that. You are focusing on social. And I think that is such a broad term. people kind of shy away from it.

They're like, I don't know. I've tried that before. When you talk to a financial professional or insurance agent, where are you starting with helping them understand what it really means to work in the social media space to develop their presence to then lead to leads and picking up clients? I think it's first dispelling some myths and concerns of the things that keep them from doing it or the, oh, I tried it and I couldn't really get it to work out. So some of those things are like we focus on, you know, what's going to get them growth and results and referral partners and seen as authority.

Not so much on becoming an influencer and getting paid off of number of views and followers, right? Because that's not what they're looking for. They're not looking to be a Kim Kardashian. They're looking to be the trusted insurance agent or advisor, right? And so that's where we lean into, hey, you're going to be doing different things, not, you know, funny dances and silly things that, you know, would necessarily be if you're approaching it from an influencer side. Yeah. But we're really going to take off, hey, what's the very specific processes and steps and strategies I can take that don't take a lot of time? Because we're not teaching people spend all day on social or anything. I do think that's a waste of time and ends up actually getting into conversations with my target audience, my strategic referral partners and even team members coming to my team if I'm looking to do that, all through the social strategies. So we narrow it down to things like focusing on a single platform until you're doing seven figures off of it versus trying to do a whole bunch that all work a little bit differently, explaining why it works the way it does. All those things to give them the exact step by steps that we help guide them through to

to bring in those results, but with really the minimum amount of time required. You know, we could break down what you just said into about a four-hour master class right there, which I want to break out a couple points because I think it's so strong. You can't be all things to all people at all times on all platforms. And I think people would nod their head and go, yeah, of course. But then they do it. They try to, you know, spray and pray and shotgun approach and post the same point. post on all their platforms or buy one of those tools that you post once and then it just sprays

it out there, but that's not effective. And I want you to go a little bit deeper on something that I'm passionate about, which is target audience. If you can pick one problem that one segment of your target audience struggles with and really become the expert in solving that problem, now all of a sudden people start seeing you and they're understanding and you take that heart of a teacher and you create content content that teaches, not content that sell, sell, sells. So talk a little bit about that target audience and creating that kind of solution to their problem.

Absolutely. And we're a complete agreement on that. I mean, the spray and prey trying to be everything, it's people are afraid to narrow down to target audiences. They think they're missing opportunity. But in reality, they tend exit by narrowing down. It's easier to be seen as authority. You know, it's everything I can keep relevant to my target audience. So it's the same thing here.

That's actually one of the very first things. we help them get very in depth with what that target audience, the psychographics, everything about that, not just, oh, families or homeowners or whatever. It's still way broad. So we help them get very specific in that. They're always maybe a little nervous, but then they're like, oh, my gosh, this has been a huge spike because now I know exactly what my content's around what I'm talking about. Even it's not even educational insurance related, but it still ties into my target audience,

what they're thinking about, what they're concerned about, family off of that as well. And so we dive deep onto that to be seen not only as the authority on that side in the go-to person, but also that's positioning is really great for the referral partners that deal with those people with their businesses too, to be able to send them over to you and trust you with them as well. So we do focus on content. That's a piece of it. But we dive into a lot of social strategies beyond just the content into the audience building, the messaging, and then even into leveraging Facebook groups around bringing stuff through too.

Because I think a lot of people get caught up on the content, which is important. but there's a lot of things to form connections and conversations. Yeah. You know, I think that anyone hearing you say what you just said would go, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But then where do they start? And that's what's cool about you kind of coming alongside and helping them, you know, craft that for themselves. Where do you feel that story comes in?

Because once you've found that target audience and that solution to the problem they have, you cannot just go, hi, I'm Mike. I do this. Call me. It's got to be presented in an educational, and I feel like some unique story approaches, because as we know, facts tell, but stories tell. Yeah, I mean, as early as you can get stories in and weave it into stuff, the better. We like to weave parts of their lives, their interests, especially in ways that I can relate

it to their target audiences. It makes it more fun and natural for the agent or the advisor. I mean, and then they're going to do it more, too, that way. And then they don't realize, oh, I can be myself, but also be seen as the authority and actually end up with the clients I want to work with and enjoy working with the day. So the more I can weave story in is the fastest way to build trust as well. And so there's a lot of ways you can do it. Like if we're talking like Facebook, you can actually pin a post the top of your profile. So I always love that as a little story and intro post about the person. So it's

always the first piece of content people see when they come to their profile. But weave it into their reels and their short videos they do into their post. You know, really naturally you can leave it into the kind of copy around everything. Why still making your points or educating. It just makes it more interesting versus just a here's an educational piece real quick well like who are you why am i even paying attention here so the more you can weave that in the better and like said like you know on podcast other things you get a chance to dive into a story a little bit more than maybe in a short post um and that's a really great way to connect with people yep okay so now a financial services professional insurance provider is listening to this going got it i'm going to do it what do they get wrong when

they start trying to work with, you know, reactivating their social because they've dabbled and but they let it go dormant. What do they get wrong? So the first thing is what platform I'm even going to focus on initially. A lot of people don't realize maybe what's required by each platform and maybe bite off more than they can chew for what they're wanting to do. Like, I love a lot of platforms like TikTok and others too, but most agents and advisors would rather murder me than do the three or four videos a day that's really required to grow on those platforms. It's not looking to be content creators. They're looking to grow their business.

And so we generally recommend and start all of our clients on something that's the fastest, easiest, quickest one to leverage, and it has unique advantages like Facebook groups. So really Facebook, not just based on the three billion users, but the fact that groups are segmented based on audience, interest, demographics, I can get to my audiences quicker off of that. And it's a lot less content creation, like one post a day, less than five, ten minutes. It can make it really simple on that. And so they maybe start on something more challenging. And then they make mistakes of not really understanding that the algorithm is all built to drive money for the company that runs it like meta for Facebook.

And so they don't really realize what they're doing wrong, like focusing on business pages, which reaches reduced down to 1% or less because they won't need to run ads or boost posts. That's how they make their money. Instead of focusing around the personal profile that has the opposite incentive, where they're really focused around engagement people on Facebook so they can serve more ads and make more money off of that versus them going off the platform like agents making mistakes of using like links and posts to direct people to websites, book a call, policy reviews or a video they made on YouTube, for example, a competitor, Google, they're trying to send them there of which Facebook has no incentive to push those posts to people that will cost them

money by sending them away from the platform. So there's little things like that that already they're working against the system than working along with it and making it easier for themselves. And most of those things aren't hard. It's just like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. You know, and similar to, okay, I'm going to join this group and day one, put a post in, and I'm going to say, call me because I can get you the best, whatever, whatever, whatever. That's the temptation. That's the tendency.

We have to resist that. We have to create, you know, connection, content, teaching, and then dribble in a little bit of like, oh, if anyone would need some help on this, just DM me, that's fine. But what are some of these other things that people tend to go, ooh, that was an easy thing. Never thought of that. And it's so simple to do, but it really does move the needle. Absolutely. I mean, like you said, some of the things are just like simple and basic, like off the bat that, oh, that makes sense. I should do that. And but it's kind of like basketball, you got to, you know, learn to dribble ball for you can, you know, do a 360 dunk, right? And so, you know, kind of starting them off like, hey, let's start off with the right setup first and start putting that place so that we can move along there.

And I think a lot of people think that even if they are doing social and doing it on their profile and doing the right way, not using links, they focus on just the passive of just the content creation. If I create this, eventually people see it. They'll reach out. They'll come to me versus all the active things I can do to create and make conversations happen with my audience or referral partners each day that I'm really building there. So I mean, there's activity around building the correct audience. There's kind of three categories that I really want to build my audience with. And then also my connections and messaging with those categories, how to use value-driven things like lead magnet, short trainings, guides that target go to my target audience and like two-step post to get people to respond and then reach out and sort of messenger conversation with them. And I mean, all these things that are so advantageous, but, you know, they build on each other as well. So that's where I find is people take action and consistency with it. You know, they can build entire business off of it. So in the day and age of AI, I feel like too many people can't even spell AI because it's like, it's just too new.

I don't know what to do. I don't wonder where to start. And then other people go too much of the deep end and go, yeah, I should be doing video. So I'm just going to make an AI avatar and it blasted out all over the place. But then it looks like an AI avatar that's been blasted out all of the place. And that works against you for authority and trust and credibility. And that's just my opinion. But what do you, what is your take on that?

I'm with you. It's a really a happy medium that you're looking for. If you're not leveraging AI at all, you're doing a lot more work and efficiently and probably less effectively than the ones that are and going to get left behind in the dust. But with the rise of AI, like you're talking about, that craving for human and trust and who's real, who am I working with is rising faster and faster to where if I'm leaning all into AI, using AI images, AI video, copy pasting stuff, especially if it has, hasn't been trained in depth on the AI, it really is like eroding trust and authority, then it's actually helping you. So that's that medium of using it as a tool to help you, you know, make processes easier around my content and what I'm going to be doing. So it's quicker and easier for me to record or put that content out. But it's still me and the images, me and the videos. And it's just making processes easier for me, especially if I take that AI along with like a virtual assistant and have them managed 90% of those items to where I can be me and focus on me in the conversations and connections there, but I can take some of that,

a lot of that work off my plate. Yeah. You know, and I think that it just needs to be something that aligns with your brand and your brand needs to be real and authentic. And I've heard it said, real is rare. You know, and it's, and it's kind of like you've probably seen this too where you can just kind of tell that a post was generated with AI. It's got all the the emojis and it's got all the, you know, the spacing and all that. And, and I feel like we have to, as a human, when we put those posts out there, you might use AI, but then you need to take that and through your own writing style, just smooth it out to make it feel like it's a human conversation. And that becomes an art form. And I feel like AI is so powerful to give us a lot

of great things, but then it never, ever will replace our brain and our own human interaction to make sure we make the right connection to people. And I think that as fast as AI is moving, we are always going to be struggling to make our human presence known to our target audience. And then when we jump on a Zoom with them, it's like, okay, let me turn on the camera and chat with you because I need to be that same person in the Zoom live Zoom that I was with that you read on my social media post. And I totally agree with the conclusion of that. And I would just flip the process a little bit because it's, it's even more work if you have

AI, you know, create something and then I've got to retry to make it fit into my brand voice and my image. We always have when we're teaching around that and like the programs, like we always teach an AI is almost like an untrained employee or intern that's come into your business, right? you don't expect it to do things right or perfectly or even know what the business is, how it really works. You've got to train it so that it becomes knowledgeable and can actually perform those. And so we really get into very specifically how am I training the AI on me, what I'm focusing on, my target audience, how I speak, how I write, and all these things. So when the outputs are now actually how I would sound, it's not using emojis, it's using my

same writing style, it's using the same slang I'm doing. And it's actually like, how I would specifically answer. Well, now I can actually trust the outputs and now it's going to easier. I don't have to rewrite things. And now I can even have, like I said, a virtual assistant help leverage some of this stuff as far as getting it posted and other things and take that off my plate. So same conclusion. Yeah, absolutely.

You want to be building that trust, authority and it be you on that. But it's going to be less work if you train the AI first. 100%. So let's wrap up with this. When you are talking to an insurance agent, financial professional, what is the deliverable or the package or what is the program that you are offering to help take them to the next level? To put it like quick and short, ultimately we're helping them get all the strategies and everything in place with one-on-one and help and support

and private community all around implementing that, which is also like a community of referral partners since they all focus on different lines of insurance as well that we encourage. But we're helping them put all this in place to pull in prospects, referrals, referral partners, or even team members from social without paid leads and paid ads, and that they know this and continue executing this over months and over years. We really are self-empowering them to continue doing that or even train team members around that so they can pull in that business all profitably. I love it.

Well, how can someone learn more and reach out and connect with you, David? So the easiest thing of their insurance agent, financial professional, we do run a free Facebook group called Marketing for Insurance agents. skip the name very simple. It's about 36,000 insurance agents in there. We do lots of trainings in there and a lot of connections between members as far as referral partners. It's a great education community. And like you said, we want to lead with value as an authority first and that makes it so much easier when people want to talk to us about our programs like the closers click that we run. So that's probably one of the easiest places is hopping in there and you'll start

to learn about social and some of the benefits there or how you can use that. Or if they want to go to our website, jumpstart go now.com or slash action dash call, then happy to learn a little bit more about us there or have a call with the team and happy to see how we can help it all or get you some resources or some tools that you can leverage. Love it. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you, Mike, so much for having me.

I really, really appreciate it. And I think we've got a similar vision on how people go out and build their businesses and their authority. 100%. You've been listening to Internet. Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.