Business Innovators Radio - Interview with David Price, CEO and Founder of The Price Group

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

David Price is the CEO and Founder of The Price Group, an insurance agency excelling in Final Expense Life Insurance. Since entering the industry in 2018, David has become one of the fastest millionaires in the field, achieving this within 36 months through his innovative system. In 2024, The Price Group reached over $15 million in sales, helping 17,000+ families and enabling agents to earn multi-six-figure incomes. In October 2024, he launched The Price Group IMO, expanding partnerships with top carriers to empower agents and enhance client service. As a Forbes Business Council member, David shares his expertise widely and uses social media to inspire and mentor agents across platforms. His dedication to transparency, integrity, and growth shapes his influence in the industry.Learn more: https://tpglife.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-david-price-ceo-and-founder-of-the-price-group

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. Influential Entrepreneurs is sponsored by Marketing Huddle, where we build an authority positioning portfolio for entrepreneurs that sells for you so that you don't have to. unique approach, gives credibility and trust to easily attract prospects into clients using podcast and TV interviews and guaranteed press coverage. For more information, go to Mike Saunders 360.com. Today we have with us David Price, who's the CEO and founder of the Price Group. David, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you, man. I'm excited to be here.

Hey, I am too. And just from our initial brief conversation before we started recording, I'm excited to learn about your story. You know, I think that so many times we hear in business and sales and marketing, you know, facts tell, but stories sell. And you've got a story to tell. So I want to hear all about it and how you serve your client, your group, your teams. So get us started with a little bit of your personal journey. What does that look like?

And then what inspired you to start the price group? Yeah, absolutely. So I was always interested in business. I grew up welfare, government assistance. My mom was a waitress, single mom trying to raise two kids. So it never really had a lot. But my grandfather actually owned a mechanic shop. They worked on heavy equipment in a very busy place in New Jersey called Piscataway.

And when I went to visit him, it was just a different lifestyle, right? You know, it was, you know, everything, you know, things, you know, the furniture matched and the towels matched. and, you know, there was always, you know, home-cooked meals and everything was just a lot different. And right there, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't have a lot of guidance on how to do that. And, you know, I ended up, you know, going through some struggles myself. You know, we're talking about a little bit before, but, you know, I got caught up with drug addiction, used drugs for about 20 years of my life, got cleaned in 2013.

Unfortunately, unfortunately, I was a very functional, functioning drug addict. I was able to live my life like most normal people. And I had a landscape business. Did a couple different things. I worked in the oil business as an employee. And it wasn't until I got clean and I really learned about mentorship. And before that, I was always trying to do things myself. I was, you know, always trying to reinvent the wheel.

Like everything you shouldn't do if you want to build a business or be successful in life and period. And anything, right? Anything. I feel like you need coaching. or a mentor, someone to show you how to do it. And, you know, when I walked into this 12-step meeting, they told me, like, listen, your best thinking got you here. I was like, wow, that makes so much sense.

And I started using a mentor, basically, right? They called a sponsor back then, and they teach how to stay clean. And, you know, that worked well. And then I ran into some Tony Robbins, I think it was a Tony Robbins audio book. And then also, my mind expanded to, like, that next step, like, okay, it's cool. I'm not using drugs and I could live a manageable life now. But I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And that led me into, you know, self-development. You really became a self-development junkie at that point. And eventually was looking for a business opportunity and I found insurance.

And that's when I started the price group. And the goal, I was looking for different business opportunities. But like the goal for me was to find a business I could do wherever I want. with whoever I want, however I want, right? And I wanted total freedom. And before I had a construction company. And with the construction company, I found I was really a slave to my employees. You know, my employees didn't show up to work or, you know, they got drunk on the customer's alcohol. And like, all these things would keep on happening.

And I didn't feel free, right? You know, even though life was a lot better than it's ever been. But with insurance, I was like, wow, you could really, you know, build virtual insurance agencies from anywhere in the world. and sell insurance right on the phone. So it completely changed my life. And that was 2018 when I got my insurance license. Within 36 months, I was able to become a seven-figure earner, which obviously life-changing. Yeah.

You know, there's a lot to unpack there. And I think we would need a three-day weekend seminar to unpack and fully, you know, amplify all that. But a couple of things that popped out at me was, boy, it's like. Tony, you mentioned Tony Robbins, and I'm going to show my age here because I'm 147 years old, I'm sure. At least my kids would think so. But I've still got Tony Robbins cassette tapes. I mean, I've been listening to him that long.

And I know you know his concept of can I, C-A-N-I, constant and never-ending improvement. And if you don't just go get that mentor and go, okay, cool, cool, thanks. I check the boxes, good to go. It is constant and never-ending improvement. And that sponsor slash mentor you had, that was. not someone that never touched a lick of alcohol or drugs. That's someone that had made the mistakes. And they said, come alongside me. Let me show you the way. And that's now what you've done. You had mentors probably in many areas of your life, spiritual, personal, financial, fitness, all of that.

But when you then got into the business, the insurance industry, yeah, you probably have mentors and still do. But now you flip that switch and like, let me just show you what I can help you do. your life. And maybe it's people that struggle with the same things you did, and maybe it's not. So talk a little bit about some of the integrity, strength, freedom, these values that the price group emphasizes. How does that shape your approach to business and leadership? Yeah. So the insurance industry, you know, it could get really flashy a lot of times and the barrier of entry is pretty low. You could just take a 20-hour pre-licensing course and get insurance license. And what I've noticed is there is a lot of people making short-term decisions. And being a

recovering drug addict, I know short-term thinking doesn't go well, ever. And so I've always made my decisions based off of long-term thinking. And, you know, when I'm coaching or mentoring an agent, you know, my goal would be to help them make money, not for me to make money, right? Where a lot of times people are, when they're mentoring someone, there's like, what's in it for me? first, but if I could help you at the same time, I will, where I just took the exact opposite approach where it's like, let me, let me put my people first, let me show them how to make money, right? And, you know, what's the saying? You know, if you show everyone how to, how to get anything they want, you get to get whatever you want. And so, so again, when I, I started the TPG, the price

group in 2018, and I was working with one insurance carrier. And, you know, everything was great for, for years for a while, but, but I felt like their values were changing and they were more worried about production numbers and, um, you know, beating the competition and, and just a bunch of things that wasn't really aligning with me, but more importantly, it wasn't aligning with the people I was working with, right? The, the people that, that I was mentoring. And I had to make a decision, um, to start working with some other insurance carriers. And I knew once I made that decision, um, The carrier, right? The one that's paying me a seven-figure income would probably stop paying me,

and probably not pay me any money they owe me. And that's when I said, listen, if I'm going to do this right and do this basically again and break everything I built and rebuild it, it needs to start with core values. And that's why, if you go to my website, first thing you see are the core values. And I think that's super important. And again, it's going to serve us for. long term. You know, I think that just makes so much sense because, you know, it's like the,

the example of you go to the grocery store and you're starving and you're hungry, you're probably not going to buy the most healthy foods out there. You're just going to go grab something and give me, give me that. If you've got these core values, leadership, integrity, courage, innovation, all of the things that you talk about, strength, courage, all of those values. If you fully embody them, and I think that's where we need to put a little exclamation. point underline of bold. It's not just the knowledge of, yeah, yeah, yeah, here's these values.

It's integrating them and implementing them and doing them and following them. It gives you that north star, that compass that, you know, here's where it pulls you. So talk a little bit about how once the values are fully identified and integrated in your life, how does it pull you versus feeling pushed and then it's easy to give up? Yeah. So one thing I like about the values, and I learn from. from a mentor of mine is when you have, you know, an agent, an employee, somebody, and they're, they're not living up to the core values that you have. And if you say, hey, listen, you failed

or and you attack them personally, you get one effect. But if you're just like, hey, Mike, listen, you know, what you did, I don't, I don't believe that lives up to our core value of integrity. What's your thoughts, right? And, and. you really start making about the core values, and I feel like you get a lot better response, and then you give it, it's like a learning opportunity. And when you're teaching people, I feel like that's a really good place to be, and that's a really good place to continue to grow and help people. Plus, you're guiding them in that conversation to have them make the decision themselves, not you saying you messed up and here's why and you need to stop doing it. You're asking

questions and you're guiding their thought process, but it's all aligned to that value. And then they come to the realization and it it kind of hits home a lot more effectively, right? Absolutely. So you're building your team. You're giving other insurance agents opportunity to come on, start maybe a side hustle. Maybe that's what, you know, they're going to start doing. Or maybe it's someone like you that's like I'm ready to jump in with both feet. What are some of the specific tools or strategies that the price group gives their agents, your agents, to help them become successful?

Yeah, absolutely. So for me, when I was looking at starting a business or starting another business, so like I said, I had a landscape company and I thought it was as simple as back then, right, you know, with the cassette days as you put, you put the ad in the yellow pages. And I thought the phones were going to ring off the hook and everyone was going to need their grass cut. And I think I'm going to got one or two calls in a year from the yellow pages, right? And then I had a construction company. I did well with that because I was in Louisiana and they had a flood. that flooded over 200,000 houses. So it was really simple. You walk into the neighborhood, all the houses are gutted, go door to door, do estimates. From there, I was repo on cars. I was repo on cars before that, and that was my first commission job. And for that, the company I worked with, they had so many cars to find. Like, there is no shortage of cars.

So I also was with some network marketing companies where I didn't do that well. So what I realize is the demand is super important. So when I was looking for a new business, it's like, how do you find your people? So what we did is we created a very, very strong lead program to where clients are calling them looking for insurance. You know, you also have to call people as well. But basically, you're getting 10 to 15 people every single day that hit our ads that are looking for insurance. Some of those people are calling you directly. Now, we have a virtual office where you get to work, right?

Because if you don't know a lot about insurance, which most people don't. And most people don't even know insurance is a great way to make a living. You're in this virtual office. And if you have a question, you get help right there. So it doesn't matter if you're in Colorado out in the middle of nowhere, New York City, Miami. It doesn't matter where you're at. You can get the support that you need. We have a CRM that we built custom for what we do.

We have a dialer that helps connect with clients. So, you know, every month I go through, I look at our data and I see what's the cost to acquire our client. You know, what's the average agent doing? And I'm just looking on improving these with their tools. So realistically, we've been able to help people just get their license within a couple weeks, get on the phones, make their first sales, make their first commissions pretty, pretty fast. The only thing that really stops them. And, you know, I could tell, you know, just speaking with you is you already know the answer is, is them, them just not willing to do the work. Or them thinking they need something different to be successful.

I had someone actually messaged me and they're looking for something else. And like, hold on a second. You're not using the tools we have and you want me to create new tools for you. Yeah. And that seems to be a very common thing. It sounds to me like there's two terms that you find agents struggle with a lot. A, shiny object syndrome and B, imposter syndrome. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm licensed.

And yeah, you say I can do it, but oh, this person had this objection. So I guess I'm not good enough. and who am I to, you know, imposter syndrome? And then shiny object syndrome, oh, that's great. David, I'm going to use your tools. And then two weeks later, it's like, yeah, but I need this and I'm not using that. And I think I can do it better this way. How do you train and guide newer agents to overcome those two aspects?

Yeah, so it's funny. The ones that just get licensed who were servers, you know, maybe worked as like a medical tech, nurses like just just you know simple basic jobs they end up doing the best because they have no experience at all so they just listen because they don't know they have no other way to do it

it's the ones that I hire from other companies that they had a way they did it which wasn't working for them or so they wouldn't want to come work with me and then they want to again just rewrite you know reinvent the wheel so the thing is I'm very direct and I'm just always going to be real direct. And for me, it's like, how do I get them

focused on doing the next thing that they had to do to be successful? And usually it's dialed the phone. Like, that's usually the answer. It's like, how many times do you dial the phone yesterday? You know, and usually if they're not having success, the answer is going to be anywhere from zero to 30. I'm like, okay, so, you know, you worked 30 minutes yesterday, maybe an hour and you're upset about the results that you didn't work for. Okay, okay. At least we got that figured it out so we can move forward now. But yeah, it's just really getting people focused on the things. You know, the other thing is when people want to start a business, they're so worried

about like an LLC and a website and they're worried about a lot of other things, which they're all important. But at the end of day, the number one thing you got to do is when you first start a business is to figure out how to create revenue and then you can solve all those other problems. So I think you just hit the nail on the head so much as to have those mentors, to have that group, to have accountability, to have encouragement. So probably within your community, you've got some top producers. And most probably if you put pin to paper or chat GPT to your group of producers,

you would find that Pareto's principle is in effect, the 80-20 rule. Out of all of your team, there's probably 20% that are doing the rock star level, bringing all of the momentum. But whatever that percentage is, it's great to be able to look to the ones that are getting or done. and then you be able to point to them and go, hey, look, here's what they're doing. Do this. It's not like I'm telling you to do something that's not going to benefit you. Look at Joe and Tommy or Fred.

Look, Betty's doing all this and she's knocking them dead. So what are some of the ways that the community, the inside community within your team is able to even help self-motivate each other? Yeah, so that's a big thing. So we do a kickoff call every morning. So we're on Zoom. We all got our cameras on. We're all very engaged. and then right from there, again, we're working in a virtual office.

So it's just a big Zoom room. It's like a virtual call center. And you're listening to people call. You're listening to people go through objections. And the goal is to show you like, listen, they're not doing anything special, right? The only thing that most people are doing that you're not doing is maybe they're handing objections a little bit better because they have a little bit more experience. But the biggest thing is they're getting more activity, right?

They're calling more people. they're not getting discouraged. They're not sounding like robots on the phone. And the thing, I guess, probably one of the things I'm most proud of is everyone's willing to help the other person. So there's a lot of people that aren't financially connected, right? So it's, but you never see, oh, I'm not going to help that person because I don't make money off that person. So that's really cool that you can see that it doesn't matter. Like, we're all just one family.

We're all willing to help. And again, like to be as an ingratia. aggressive sales organization as we are and seeing that, I know that's really rare and I'm really happy for it. Yeah, I mean, that's the old, if you ever read the book, The Go Giver by Bob Berg, you know, just giving and serving and providing value and when we all win or when we all do well, we all win. And if I need to help you, then it's going to really come full circle.

I think that's a special environment that you've cultivated. That's a culture that you had to start because it starts at the top. So final question, what are some of the long-term goals that the price group has that fits within what you're seeing the insurance industry headed in the next decade? So what do you see in some of the things in the next few years and where are you guys looking to fold into that to really take advantage of opportunity? Yeah, Mike. So, you know, there's all on the 80-20 rule. And the way my business was set up before, that was 100%. That's how it was, right?

There was very, very few people did the majority of the production and yet a lot of people that did it very little. And what I really focused on this time with our systems processes and also our hiring process, we got a lot more strict and rigid with that. It is having a really strong, you know, like, you know, they say America, you know, is a great country because we have a strong middle class, right, where it's not poor and rich. and what I've been really doing is focusing on, you know, breaking that 80-20 rule, right? And we're doing a really good job. The numbers, when I look at the data and I compare them to what they were before, it's night and day difference. And we've really created an environment where just an average person who's willing to do the work

can not just survive, but they could really thrive. And I think that's something different. That's something I haven't seen in the industry yet. usually it's, you know, 100% the 80-20 rule. So just to see our numbers in as we grow, typically as you grow, that's where the law of large numbers come in effect. And that 80-20 rule really, really starts coming in effect. But as we're growing, we're actually doing the exact opposite, right?

The data is looking better to where the average agents having even more success. So really excited to see that. So, you know, we want to be a full service IMO, all for health, life, annuities, and ultimately have the most profitable insurance agents that just systems and processes just make it way easier than it was in the past to be successful in this industry. And then also just higher ROI than what the norm has been in this industry. Yeah. That's huge. And I think, you know, keeping your drive of your personal development, your working on yourself and your values helps that kind of filter down through the whole team. They follow, you know, your lead.

Success leads clues. And sometimes it's messy success. So you've got the story to tell and the scars to prove it. And you're like, let's go. Here's what's working for me. And then you get those leaders doing the same thing. And it just becomes this team and this family and this climate. So I just love the crusade and the mission that you're on.

It's just spectacular. So if someone is interested in learning a little bit more about what you do and maybe joining your team, what's the best way they can do that, David? Yeah, they could go directly to our website, TPGLife.com. They can find me on Instagram, David Price Official. And we also have a neutral Facebook group that is for anyone in insurance or anyone that's interested in insurance, whether or not you want to work with me or not, called We Are Insurance Agents.

And we go live there every Thursday. and just try to provide value to agents no matter of who they're working with. As a matter of fact, some of the people that go live aren't even part of my team. Neat. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Awesome, Mike.

I really appreciate it. And this has been a lot of fun. Thank you. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. Radio.com