326 Focus Sessions: Top of the Table

An Informal Learning Session with

MDRT and Top of the Table Leaders
Adelia C. Chung, CLU, ChFC, Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC, and Moderator: Brian H. Ashe, CLU

Ashe: Two MDRT Past Presidents will discuss how they have
run their practices, maintained a strong work-life balance,
and consistently qualified for Top of the Table. If you think
you can’t increase your productivity and also find time for
your family, you’re in the right place.
Let’s start with a couple of questions. Adelia, do you feel
that you lead a balanced Whole Person life?
Chung: I believe I do now. But it wasn’t always the case. I
really had to be deliberate and make choices. As some of you
may know, we lost our three-year-old daughter to leukemia.
That was really a wake-up call for me, because my family was
always important to me, but my work has always been impor-
tant to me as well. And I think, as women, we do this to our-
selves. We want to be the perfect everything. And I’m here to
tell you, that doesn’t exist, and I don’t believe that’s possible.
My life used to be this: I would be the first one in the
office every day and the last to leave. I’d work weekends
and I never had really clingy, needy kids. It wasn’t that I
didn’t want to be at their activities, but they seemed to be
OK if I wasn’t there, and I always thought I would have a
second chance.
And then Alanna dies and she’s three years old, and I
realize her brother is six years old. And I had not been to a
single preschool excursion. I had not done any of the things
that I wanted to do and always thought I would have the
time to do. I think that’s one of the gifts she gave us: To real-
ize that time is precious, and very often you have only one
chance to make a memory. I then became a room mother.
I did all kinds of things that I never thought my work life
would allow me to do.
And you know what I found? When you prioritize and
you make the time, there is time for everything. And my cli-
ents now know that my work is important to me, and when
I’m at work I’m happy to be there. But when I’m at home, I’m
also happy to be at home. And I think that it’s a choice we
need to make, and we need to manage our time. So I truly
believe that work balance is possible.

Brian H. Ashe, CLU

Ashe is a 46-year MDRT member with 16 Court of the Table and four Top of the Table qualifications. An
MDRT Past President, his work is concentrated in estate conservation, retirement planning, employee
benefits, and business insurance strategies. A popular speaker, Ashe has addressed groups around the
world. He currently writes the “Back Page” column for Advisor Today, and his comments have appeared
in the Wall Street Journal, Money, the Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business, and more—as well as
on more than 60 radio stations and 95 TV stations.
Brian Ashe & Associates Ltd
1440 Maple Ave Ste 9B, Lisle, IL 60532 USA
email: bashe29843@aol.com phone: +1 630.964.0966

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Adelia C. Chung, CLU, ChFC

Chung is a 35-year MDRT member with eight Court of the Table and 13 Top of the Table qualifications.
She was the first female MDRT President, serving in 2005, and has been a Chair or member of more
than 20 MDRT committees. She is an Excalibur Knight of the MDRT Foundation and served as its
President in 1999. The owner of Spectrum Wealth Management in Honolulu, Hawaii, Chung has
held many positions of leadership throughout the life insurance business, and she regularly speaks to
international audiences.
Spectrum Wealth Management LLC
3468 Waialae Avenue Suite 234, Honolulu, HI 96816 USA
email: adelia@spectrumhawaii.com phone: +1 808.469.4081

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Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017 ©Million Dollar Round Table

 An Informal Learning Session with MDRT and Top of the Table Leaders 327

Ashe: When that occurred, which was a tremendously dif-
ficult and an emotional time, you did find a way to help turn
that sacrifice into a positive that wound up benefiting other
people. Could you share that with us?
Chung: When you’re going through a difficult time, some-
times it’s really hard to see the good in it. But, fortunately, I’ve
always been raised to believe that there’s good in everything.
Our daughter was given six weeks to live after her diagnosis,
and her only hope for survival was a bone marrow transplant.
There was no family donor, so we needed to do a bone mar-
row drive. We did 22 drives in a six-week period, and over
30,000 people joined the bone marrow registry.
My husband said during one of the television interviews
where we were making our plea that if Alanna could not
find a donor, at least other people could and would. She was
very fortunate; she did find a donor from Taiwan. She did
have a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, she relapsed.
But, today, over 150 people have matched and were given a
second chance at life.
It’s the kind of thing you don’t wish on anyone, but if
you look for it, there’s a lot of good that has come out of it.
We’ve grown personally. We’ve been made aware of medical
research and the importance of it. If that didn’t happen to
us, I’m not sure we would have the same kind of passion that
we do for medical research.
Ashe: Thank you for sharing that. I’ve always thought that if you
look at someone’s resume, you really don’t have to ask too many
more questions because it’s on the resume. But anybody can
look at a resume and really not have an understanding of who
that person is. Marv, could you just touch on one thing that’s off
the resume about you that most people don’t know? It could be
an avocation; it could be a family thing or a school project that
you were involved in. What’s off the resume about you?
Feldman: You want the compliance edited version? Well,
there are a couple of things. I can’t limit it to one, but there
are a couple of things that most people don’t know about
me. When I was younger, before children, both my wife and
I used to race sports cars. We had a Corvette, and we cam-
paigned it all over the Midwest, and we would race on the
weekend and spend the entire week putting it back together,
so we could race on the weekend.
Unfortunately, just as we were having children, I was
involved in a major accident where I ran off the course and
had a problem and stuck and ripped the nose off, ripped the
back off. So I was sitting there in a roll cage looking around
saying, “Where’s my car?” And I quit racing. I raced once
more after that, and I said, “I’ve got to be here to raise my
family.” So I made a decision not to race anymore.
Unfortunately, the urge for speed never disappeared. So
now, when I buy a car, the dealer gives me a preprinted book
of speeding tickets that he just puts in the glove box. So I still
like to drive fast cars.
The other thing that nobody knows about me is that I used
to be a competitive pistol shooter, and I campaigned around
the country in the senior’s class primarily. I’m much better at
shooting something with a pistol than I am with a rifle or a
shotgun. So I have a whole arsenal of weapons and enough to
make sure that nobody in the neighborhood is ever molested.
Ashe: Let me ask you both a question. How do you think
your involvement with the Million Dollar Round Table has
enhanced both your personal and business experiences?
Chung: Well, the Million Dollar Round Table exposes you to so
much. And I am so grateful to MDRT for so many of the oppor-
tunities I’ve been given. I really think that I’m just an ordinary
person. I had an exceptional childhood, but I never thought my
adult life would turn out to be the journey that I’ve had.

Marvin H. Feldman, CLU, ChFC

Feldman is president of the Feldman Financial Group, and president and CEO of the LIFE Foundation.
He is a 43-year MDRT member, past Top of the Table Chair and 2002 MDRT President, with 35 Top
of the Table qualifications. He received the Circle of Life award in 2004 and the John Newton Russell
award in 2011, the highest honor for an individual by the insurance industry. Feldman was also named to
Insurance Newscast’s list of the 100 Most Powerful People in the Insurance Industry, North America, and
is listed in “Who’s Who in Business and Finance” and “Who’s Who in the World.”
Feldman Financial Group
2016 Eagle Pointe, Palm Harbor, FL 34685 USA
email: marv@feldmanfinancialgroup.com phone: +1 727.723.9020

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©Million Dollar Round Table Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017

328 Focus Sessions: Top of the Table
And it really started at an MDRT meeting, my very first.
What’s interesting is, as Brian mentioned, my dad was in the
business. And so the first year I qualified he said, “You will
be attending the Annual Meeting.” And I said, “I can read
the books. I can watch the videotapes.” And he said, “It’s not
the same as being there.”
And so the Dallas Annual Meeting was my very first
meeting. I went to that meeting thinking I was going to
learn the secret. I was going to meet somebody who was
going to tell me: Here’s the formula, and if you just do that,
you’ll be successful. And with just two years in the busi-
ness, it was great that I learned early on that really there is
no secret. At that meeting, I met so many wonderful peo-
ple, and I realized then that the best people in our industry
are really people who are just trying to do a good job. And
so much of the external world paints us as salespeople or
pushy. But then I came to this MDRT meeting, and I met
people and realized that the best of the best were really
good people who just wanted to do good. And they really
weren’t doing anything different from what I was doing.
They were just doing a lot more of it. So that was a valuable
lesson early on.
The other thing that MDRT does is it teaches you to
experience discomfort, but to work through it. And this
organization has given me so many opportunities to grow.
You have this supportive network, and you realize that you’re
in over your head. But no one here will ever let you drown.
And so, as a result, you grow because you’re on the edge all
the time and people are pushing and encouraging you.
It was said this morning during the Main Platform that
our industry is unique because people are willing to share
and grow. And I think that’s what makes MDRT special.
Ashe: I’ve heard that among MDRT membership about
30 percent of members are related in some way to another
member—mother, father, brother, cousin—probably more
so in this business than in other businesses. And, Marv, your
father, Ben Feldman, was looked at as an icon of this busi-
ness. I would ask you, in looking at MDRT activities and
opportunities: Did you find that there were both positives
and negatives associated with the fact that your father was
looked at as an icon?
Feldman: Well, absolutely. First of all, how many people here
are second and third generation in the business? There are
quite a few. And I’m sure you can relate to this if you have
parents who are in the business.
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If you have a really good year, everybody looks at you and
says that your mom or your dad gave you the business, right?
But if you have a really bad year, everybody gives you full
credit. Think about that for a second. That was one of the
things I had to deal with when I first started in the business.
So, psychologically, you have to come to grips with that and
understand that you have to do things on your own, but, at
the same time, you have to learn from the mistakes of oth-
ers because you’re not going to live long enough to make all
those mistakes yourself. So it’s important to listen to what
your parents are saying. It’s important to listen to what your
peers are telling you and learn from their mistakes and learn
from their successes and build on that as you go forward.
I remember coming to my first MDRT. I was seven
years in the business at that point. I’d spent two and a half
years with New York Life as an agent and then five years
in its management program. And, as a manager, you’re not
allowed to sell, so you can’t qualify for MDRT. So when I
came back into personal production, I was fortunate, and
the next year I did go to an MDRT meeting.
And, of course, I grew up second generation hearing
about MDRT all the time. I went to my first meeting, and of
course I knew my dad and my dad’s friends who were all his
age. I didn’t know anybody my age.
So I got to the first meeting—Main Platform—and I was
sitting in the very last row of the balcony in the meeting hall
in San Francisco. I was looking down at the stage, which is
about four miles away, saying, “Who the hell are all those
old, white-haired people on the stage?” And then, 20 years
later, I was the old, white-haired person on the stage.
I volunteered for PGA at the very first meeting because
I was told that was what I had to do. And I volunteered for
something every year that I went to an MDRT meeting.
And I think, in my career, I’ve only missed two and that was
due to family commitments, and family always comes first.
But MDRT has become and always has been an integral part
of my practice. It’s where I developed my circle of friends
that I could go to. So MDRT became my oversized study
group where I could look at people like you and say, “Hey,
I’ve got a case and I don’t know what to do with it. Can I
call you and discuss it?” And we’d talk about cases, and I’d
figure out what to do. I could talk to my dad, but I didn’t
always want to hear what he wanted to tell me. So I had to
get some positive reinforcement from someplace else. And
MDRT was that positive reinforcement.
If you’re not taking advantage of that, if you’re not mak-
ing those relationships and you’re not reaching out to other
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 An Informal Learning Session with MDRT and Top of the Table Leaders
people, you really, truly need to do that. Because that’s how
you will grow.
Ashe: Marv, you’ve qualified for Top of the Table 35 times.
And you lived in East Liverpool, Ohio.
Feldman: The booming metropolis.
Ashe: It’s not the booming metropolis, not where you had
4 million prospects out your front door. Would you say that
you owed that to the fact that the Feldman name in East Liv-
erpool, Ohio, just opened doors to all of those prospects? Or
were you just a person who loved to prospect on your own?
Feldman: I was a masochist; I loved to prospect on my own.
Actually, the Feldman name sometimes was a hindrance be-
cause people would say, “He’s coming to sell me something.
I’m not going to buy it no matter what he says.” And you do
get that from time to time.
Our little town had 10,000 people in it. When I was grow-
ing up, it was 25,000. I think today it’s about 8,000. But I
knew that I had to develop my own client base. I couldn’t
depend on my father’s because they were all his age. Today,
they’d all be 104 years old. I don’t think they’d be good pros-
pects for anything. So I had to concentrate on developing
my own clients, and when I moved to East Liverpool with
my wife, I said that this is one of the things that we really
had to key in on. What you should all know is that I hate
to prospect with a passion. I don’t like it. But I developed a
system that worked for me even when I wasn’t working the
system. And I was able to do what I needed to do. But all my
clients were 50 to100 miles away. They weren’t in the East
Liverpool area, although we had people who would walk in
and ask if we could do things.
But what I prospected for were people who were in the
estate planning arena or in business succession. I was a per-
son with blinders on—that’s what I looked for. So I did very
little disability. If I had somebody who needed that, I called
another agent in. If it was a group case, I called in another
agent. Long-term care didn’t come in until long after I was
doing other things. But even with long-term care, I called
somebody else in to do it, because I wanted to specialize in
certain areas and that’s what I concentrated on.
But it was no different from being in any other place. You
go where the prospects are, and you make the effort.
Ashe: But you didn’t like doing it?
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329
Feldman: I hated it. I still hate it.
Ashe: And I think that’s probably true for most of us, isn’t
it? The one thing that we hate to do is prospect. If you find
someone whom you can partner with who likes to prospect,
that’s a real gift. But I think it’s the toughest thing that we
do—finding people and knowing the right questions to ask
them to try to open up cases.
Feldman: Some people dislike it. I hated it. There’s a differ-
ence. But I did force myself to do it, and I can do it very, very
well. But it’s like anything else: If you’re going to be success-
ful, you have to learn to do the things that you truly don’t
like to do, and you have to push through those areas that you
don’t do well. And if you can find an alternative way to do it,
which is what I did, then that works.
I hired a young lady to come in and make the telephone
calls for me for prospecting. When I picked up the tele-
phone, the first thing that happened was, I saw this row of
teeth that started to develop on the telephone. And I thought
that by the time I got it to my ear, it was going to clamp on
and never let go. So I sent out pre-approach letters, and I had
a young lady who made the phone calls. She was wonderful
on the phone. She was better than I was. And she’d make
the appointments. And then, if I had to do follow-up, it was
a warm call, not a cold call. So I developed a system that
worked for me as opposed to being continually frustrated
trying to do it on my own.
Ashe: Both of you have consistently qualified for Top of the
Table. And I’ve heard it said before that the only thing that is
certain is change. So given that the only thing that is certain
is change, where do you think the future opportunities lie,
and are they as great as the opportunities that have existed
in the past?
Chung: Well, I think the one unique thing is, it’s easy to
sometimes think that the future doesn’t include us. But I do
believe that this is a relational business. And I do believe that
as much as companies will try to push us out of the equation,
there will always be the need for a good advisor. And we hear
a lot about relationships and developing that skill set, and I
truly believe that that’s what differentiates us. Because even as
we sit here, the products that we have are obtainable every-
where, right? Online, people can do their own research. But
people still need someone to guide them. Because informa-
tion is not the problem, right? It’s getting people to execute it.
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330 Focus Sessions: Top of the Table
It’s bringing that human element. So I really believe that there
will always be a role for the advisor.
It’s interesting, because one of the companies that I do a
lot of business with does a lot of online sales. And one day
our office got a phone call and the individual said, “If I buy
it on the Internet or from you, is it the same price?” And I
said, “Yes.” He said, “OK, I’m just going to go fill out the
forms on the Internet.” I said, “Wait. You can get me for free.
Why would you want to fill out the forms and schedule the
medical and do it all by yourself when you can have someone
guide you through the process?” And then I said, and the
one thing I still haven’t figured out is, “How do you apply
for a death claim online?” When it matters most we’re there.
Feldman: It’s hard when you’re dead to apply for the death
benefit.
Chung: Exactly. And your family doesn’t even know what to
do, right? And I think that’s where our real value comes into
play. I think many companies think that they can do without
us, and they think that an 800 number will replace us. But I
do think that if you’re good at developing relationships and
you’re good at providing exceptional service, there will always
be a place for you.
Feldman: I travel around the world. I speak in a lot of dif-
ferent countries. And I see a lot of government regulation
in every country, not just here. But government regulation
is pushing out those people who are marginal in our busi-
ness. The people sitting in this room are not marginal. You
are the best of the best. You represent the best of the fi-
nancial services industry. And when everybody else is gone,
you’re still going to be here because you will be able to
adapt to the new regulations and the new compliance issues
and whatever else is required. And that’s what happened in
the UK. It’s got far, far fewer agents and advisors, but the
ones who are still there are doing much better than they’ve
ever done in its history. And you heard that on the Main
Platform today.
The population base is increasing. There are more and
more people—more people who are earning more money,
more people who have problems that need to be solved.
And they need to speak with somebody. And while a robot
advisor might work, a robot advisor does not provide sym-
pathy or empathy over the telephone. You do. That gives
you the ability to develop trust and confidence, which a
robot advisor will never do.
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I think the opportunities for those of us sitting in this
room are absolutely phenomenal at this point. And I think
this is a tremendous opportunity to be bringing in new peo-
ple because they’re going to be trained from the get-go with
all these compliance issues. They’re not going to ever know
there was another way to do it. It’s the only thing they’ve
ever known, so it’s the norm for them. It’s going to be easy
for them to adapt. So if you have young people whom you’re
trying to bring in, successor agents, family members, I think
right now is fantastic time for that.
Ashe: I was just thinking that one of the strange anomalies on
advice—and this relates to the Department of Labor regula-
tions in the United States—was the encouragement by the
government of the use of robot advisors because the cost of
the transaction is low. And yet we have this explosion of new
fiduciary duties, right? And I think Joe Jordan put it best
when he said, “So isn’t it strange? They think that no advice is
still better than your advice.”
They put in all of these fiduciary standards that people
have to adhere to and then say, “But we’re encouraging you
to go someplace where you get no advice.” It’s kind of a
strange circumstance we live in. It doesn’t make sense, does
it? Not when you think of it that way.
Feldman: Well, but it’s government regulations. It’s not de-
signed to make sense.
Ashe: One of the things, too, that I would like your input
on—because we have older advisors in the room and we have
younger advisors in the room—is, do you perceive differences
in the way in which old and seasoned advisors approach their
business, approach industry involvement with associations,
and have the same sense of starting with a professional or-
ganization as soon as they start their careers? Is it something
you think that they will grow into? Because I see, certainly
from my vantage point, decreases in participation. And I’m
not so sure if it’s just that people don’t feel that there’s value,
or is there a whole set of different assumptions that younger
people have versus older people have? Because, in the past,
professional associations were a very big part of our business.
Chung: I know, for me, when I entered the business—and
certainly it’s changed over the last 30-plus years—we had a
manager who said, and who happened to be my dad, but he
set the standards: “You will join me; you will participate; you
will go to MDRT.” I didn’t even think enough to question
©Million Dollar Round Table
 An Informal Learning Session with MDRT and Top of the Table Leaders
that. I think certainly young people today question every-
thing. I think sometimes you just need to do it, and then
you see the value in it. And it makes me very sad that young
people aren’t joining professional organizations, because it
can enrich your life. You think you’re contributing to your
industry, but then you gain so much more.
And part of it is, when you join an organization like
NAIFA, I think, you’re making that commitment to support
your industry. And you’re no longer on the sidelines; you’re
actually involved and you’re made aware of what’s going on.
I think that young people take that for granted. They think
somebody else is going to pave the road for them; they think
that they don’t need to participate, and yet this wonderful
career that we have is going to remain unchanged if they
don’t invest their time and energy. So I think that the busi-
ness has evolved, that there isn’t that same level of guidance
and the same kind of respect maybe. I used to just do things
because my elders told me to do it. And then I saw the value
down the road.
I think it’s very tough for young people today, because
there are so many options. We had very few options. If you
want to be successful, you go down this path. But, today,
there are so many ways to define success, and there are so
many ways to reach it. I think that, unless a young person
has someone guiding them, the path is very crooked.
Ashe: Let me ask a question if there are people in the audi-
ence from outside of North America. Do your countries have
an increased or a decreased participation in professional as-
sociations?
Audience Question: Big insurance companies, like New
York Life, Mass Mutual, and Northwestern Mutual, have,
year after year, fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer agents
in the field. What’s going to happen 10, 15, 20 years from
now? What does corporate have to do in order to attract more
people and repay the business? I see, in my office, 10 people
come in, and maybe one is going to stay at the end of the year
and, five years later, maybe will not be around. What’s going
to happen? It is a problem.
Also, I’m the only one coming to MDRT from my gen-
eral office out of 80 agents. The last meeting we had with
NAIFA was about six months ago. I’m preoccupied with that
kind of thing because, as Mr. Feldman said, the need of the
marketplace is there. Who’s going to serve that? Who’s going
to push them? Who’s going to guide them to make the deci-
sion and implement a financial plan?
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331
Feldman: Well, you’ve got two situations. You’ve got what
we have here in the United States and then what you have
every place else. Look at Asia where the number of agents is
growing exponentially. I think somebody told me the other
day that in mainland China there are 10 million agents. I
know Ping An has 1 million plus agents all by itself, and it
continues to grow. And, as its middle market grows, there will
be more and more need. What it needs are more permanent
agents as opposed to temporary.
Part of the problem we have here in the United States is,
if you go back 20 years ago, there were 1,900 companies.
Last year, that reduced to under 900 companies. There aren’t
nearly as many companies out there that are in the market
to recruit. A lot of companies are now manufacturers, but
they’re not distributors. It’s going through the brokerage sys-
tems. And you’ve got New York Life and Northwestern and
others that are recruiting, but the average age in the industry
is almost 60 years old at this particular point. So normal
attrition is going to take about 30 percent of our agents over
the next eight to ten years.
If you work the numbers backward, and let’s assume there
are 300,000 full-time agents, we’re going to lose 120,000, or
30 to 40 percent, which means that, over a 10-year period,
you’ve got about 12,000 agents per year that are disappear-
ing. Unfortunately, retention in our industry is still only 15
percent at the end of four years. Work the numbers back-
ward. In order to have 12,000 agents after four years, you
have to start with 80,000 hires. Can anybody guess how
many agents were hired in the last year or so by the few com-
panies that are still hiring? Between 30,000 and 34,000 total
agents. And that includes the State Farms, the Allstates, all
of the P&C companies—that’s the total. We need 80,000.
We’re getting 30,000 to 34,000.
Something has to change. Or it just represents one tre-
mendous opportunity for the young people coming into the
business. There are fewer and fewer of us needing to service
an ever larger population base that’s continuing to earn more
and more money and have discretionary funds to spend.
That’s worldwide.
As I said before, this is a tremendous opportunity for all
of us because our competition is going away. For old guys,
how many more years are they going to be able to run hard
and do the things that they need to do? I’m in the process of
turning my entire practice over to my successor agent who
happens to be my niece—third generation in our business.
And now, when a client calls me, I find out what he or she
needs and I’ll say, “I’ll have Wendy call you.” And I work
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332 Focus Sessions: Top of the Table
with her to do what needs to be done. But I want continuity
in the family. The opportunity is there.
Ashe: My younger son is in the business as well.
Feldman: There are issues; there are problems. Nobody has
really addressed how they’re going to resolve that. They’re
never going to be able to hire enough agents to replace what
we currently have. But I think that once everybody adjusts to
the new world of compliance, and with the DOL and other
things that are going on, people will be able to become more
proficient and more efficient, and we’ll be able to continue to
grow practices.
Audience Question: My question is for both of you who
have parents in the business. I have a son who is 21 whom
I’m looking to bring into the business. Or let me rephrase
that—he wants to get into the business. But with both of
your parents being in the business, did they make it harder,
such as, “I had to figure it out, so you’re going to have to fig-
ure it out”? Or was there coaching and advice?
Chung: What’s interesting is, I did have a father in the busi-
ness. And my father did not have a college education. He sac-
rificed to make sure I had one. I went to college, and I started
law school. And it was after my first year of law school that
I started selling insurance. I didn’t think it was going to be a
career at the time; I thought it was a summer job. And then
I decided not to go back to law school. My father was devas-
tated at the time. He just kept saying to me, “I can’t believe
I spent all this money educating you, and you want to do
what?” It wasn’t that he didn’t think it was a great career, be-
cause obviously it was and it serves him well. He just thought
he wanted an easier life for me. So he kept saying, “Are you
sure you want to do this? Because this is hard.”
Like Marvin, I hated to prospect. But my leads came
from orphan policyholders. I started with an agency that was
very established and had a huge book, but no one had been
servicing many of these clients for decades. And so I didn’t
have to make cold calls because people actually had a policy.
So what basically happened was, I would call them, and I
would say, “Your account has been transferred to me. My
name is Adelia. I’d like to meet with you to make sure the
policy is still doing what you intended it to do.”
Now, I got rejections because people would say, “Well,
you just want to sell me something.” And I said, “No, no, no,
I’m really sincere about just wanting to explain this to you.”
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Feldman: But you wanted to sell them something.
Chung: No, I was really sincere. I wanted a relationship at
the time. That’s really what I was looking for—a relationship.
And so you still get rejected. I had one woman I called four
times every six months. And she kept saying no, and when
she finally said yes, years later, I said, “Why did you say yes?”
She said, “Because I knew if I told you to call back in six
months, you would, so I was trying to get it over with.”
So you still need a system, but I didn’t really make
cold calls. What’s interesting is, my dad made it very hard
for me the first three years in the business. And the other
agency managers used to tease because, really, he was try-
ing to push me out of his office. But when you’re 22 years
old and someone tells you you can’t do it, it’s motivation to
do it, right? I didn’t have my own office; I didn’t have my
own phone. But what I did have was that I really believed in
what life insurance could do. I really believed in the prod-
ucts, and I really felt like I was helping people. That was
my motivation.
But fast-forward. I have a son now who is 27 years old. He
graduated from college, and his parents say to him, “Well,
you have two choices. You can move home and live free
for a year and look for a job. Or you can stay in California
and find a job.” So he called me up one day, and he said, “I
decided I’m staying in California, and I have a job.” And I
said, “And what are you going to do?” He explained it to me,
and I said, “Spencer, that’s not a job; that’s an opportunity.”
Well, it turns out he is in the insurance business. I wouldn’t
say he’s good at it, but his manager makes him prospect.
And, for some reason, he listens to her. So during the first
year in the business, he could not go home on Friday until
he had 12 appointments. And his record is 95 phone calls for
one appointment.
Feldman: That’s persistency.
Chung: That is. And I used to say to Steve, “I think this kid
has a loose screw.” Who would keep calling after that? But,
I’m happy to say, it’s been four years and he’s still in the busi-
ness. For someone who has a child, I think this business is a
wonderful opportunity, and Brian can speak to it because his
son is in the business. But I also do think it’s a tough business,
and you can’t want it for your child. The child has to want it
for himself.
Feldman: Absolutely.
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Chung: This isn’t easy, but it becomes your purpose and your
mission. It is nice to have someone in the family understand
what you’re doing. And I think that’s what was helpful to me
as much as my dad initially didn’t support it. Once he knew
I was serious, he understood what it took in this business and
he was able to support me in that way.
Feldman: I’ll give you a quick story about my starting in the
business because my dad had such a high profile in the indus-
try. I graduated from Ohio State on March 16. I got married
on March 18. I started full-time with New York Life on March
27. And I started in Columbus, Ohio, which was 200 miles
away from my father’s operation, for two reasons. Number
one, my wife was still in school. And, number two, I needed
to prove to myself and the rest of the industry that I was either
going to fail or succeed on my own. I did well enough that
and after two and a half years, New York Life came to me and
said, “We’d like you to come into the management program.”
And, of course, my dad said, “That’s where people go who
can’t work in sales.” That was OK; I still wanted to do this.
Then, I finally came back into the field, when my mother
developed cancer. Just before she died, he said, “Please come
back.” We moved back to our little town of East Liverpool.
But I still remember two things. One was the very first
time I went on my very first interview as a brand-new agent.
Now remember, I grew up with Ben Feldman. When we
sat down for dinner, we talked life insurance. When we sat
down for breakfast, we talked life insurance. When we went
on vacation, we talked life insurance. I don’t think my dad
could talk about anything without life insurance coming in
somewhere. He loved to fish. I’m sure if he could have sold
the fish a policy, he would have done that too.
But that very first interview that I went out on, I can
remember telling myself, I’m not going to say what my dad
says. I’m not going to do what my dad did. I’m going to do this
on my own. And I walked out, after I was all done, and said,
“Oh crap, I said it just like my dad.” But I closed the sale.
So it worked.
When I returned back into my dad’s operation after seven
years, I developed enough skills that he pretty much left me
alone and let me do what I wanted to do. He told me there
was a case he had been working on, and his personality and
the individual he called on didn’t mesh. He said, “Marv, I
think your personality will do better on this case.” Now, I’d
just come from management where I was training people on
how to sell $25,000 and $50,000 policies. Not premiums—
policies. And he handed me an illustration to go present to
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333
this person that was for $1 million. Well, like anybody else,
I’d never seen a million-dollar illustration that I was going
to go present.
And the only good thing that happened about that par-
ticular appointment was that I went. That was it. I didn’t
make the sale, but I learned a lot. I learned to think big, and
I learned to understand from my father, and I remember him
telling me this: The problems of the clients he worked with,
from a perspective standpoint, are the same as somebody else
who needs just a $5,000 or a $1,000 or a $15,000 or $20,000
policy. The only difference is that their problem is bigger. It’s
got more zeros on it. The solution has more zeros on it. And
once I learned that and I understood that and I accepted it,
it was no longer a problem for me to go out and call on those
types of people. And that’s when I restructured how I was
prospecting.
Audience Question: This is my 21st year in the business.
One thing I never did was qualify for Court of the Table.
So I was wondering, is there any magic idea that I can get?
For example, my clients are all professional doctors and im-
migrants. Maybe I’m not a good closer. I am a great door
opener, but I don’t close. I don’t go for big numbers. I’m not
a good salesperson.
Feldman: It doesn’t matter whether you’re working on large
numbers as far as the size of the case or large numbers based
on the number of people you’re seeing. You just have to put
it in perspective. If your average size case is $3,000 and you
want to make a goal, you divide the goal by 3,000, and that’s
how many cases you have.
But if your average case is $30,000 and your goal is there,
you divide 30 into whatever that goal is. And maybe it’s a
lot fewer cases; they’re just much bigger. The problem with
bigger cases is, they’re much more complicated and harder
to get through.
If I were to do anything over again, I would concentrate
much more on case rate than on case size.
Audience Question: It’s not that my face amount is small.
I do $1 million, $10 million, but mostly term. And then, of
course, the DI and retirement. I do all areas of planning. The
problem is that most of my audience, for some reason, are not
into a permanent life insurance solution.
Feldman: There’s nothing wrong with term. Term is your in-
ventory of future business. So, at some point, the term makes
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them clients. And you have to have clients before you can go
back and call on them again. So you make them clients, and
then you go back and call on them over and over and over,
and you educate them on the importance of solving a perma-
nent problem with a permanent product.
Now, if they only have a temporary problem, term insur-
ance is fine. But what if they’re looking to do things for
estate planning purposes? What if it’s something perhaps
on a buy-sell succession planning in a medical practice?
Those are where permanent products work. If they have a
special needs child, they need permanent products because
that child is going to be around. It’s a matter of educating
your clients as to how the permanent product fits in their
particular situation. So it’s problem, solution, problem, solu-
tion—that’s what you have to do.
Audience Question: I want to hear each of your specific
languages on how you prospect, because obviously the cli-
entele that you work with is much different from when we
started 25 years ago, for anybody that’s growing. To have a
bigger leap or those quantum leaps, what specifically are you
articulating when you’re asking for prospects? Are you defin-
ing them?
Chung: Again, I’m really no good at prospecting. My focus
has always been with the clients I have, trying to create mem-
orable experiences for them. We do that by trying, and it’s the
little things. When they come into the office, everyone calls
them by name. It’s touching them twice a year, at least, with a
birthday card, and I usually send Thanksgiving cards. We do
client appreciation events as well.
But our referrals have come organically. If there’s one
benefit of being a dinosaur in this business, it is the children,
the families that we sold policies on when those children
were young. They’ve now grown up. We’ve been with the
family for 20 to 30 years. Just the other day, I had a girl
come in, and she had just graduated from med school. She
said, “Adelia, I don’t know why I’m here, but my dad said I
need to talk to you.” That happens a lot. When I was born,
my parents bought me a policy, and now I have a baby, so I
want to buy my baby a policy.
A lot of the referrals right now just come organically. I
wish I could ask for referrals, but the few times I’ve been
able to and know what to say, it’s then that I can’t make the
follow-up call. So it does happen just by itself if you continue
to maintain relationships. As the children grow up, you
become the life insurance agent for that family. Or if they
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have friends. So, for me, that’s really how it’s evolved. Again,
I would just pick up more orphans and reach out to them.
Ashe: I’d like to insert one thing here just because I happen to
have this information that I was going to pass on to someone
else later. I’ll ask the question of the people in the room just
in general. Which group of people in members of the Million
Dollar Round Table—a regular member, Court of the Table,
or Top of the Table member—has the most lives? In 2015,
and I’ve tracked this for 16 years, a regular member of the
Million Dollar Round Table wrote on average 163 lives. An
average for Top of the Table is 715 lives.
The reason I’m saying that is, we have a perception that
when people reach Top of the Table, they’re writing these
huge cases on 20 or 30 lives. And consistently, from the time
that I was President of the Million Dollar Round Table,
looking at this back in 2000, every single year Top of the
Table members have more lives than any other category of
membership. And if you look even at, well, 163 to 700, is
there a linear progression on income? No. It’s an exponential
increase on income. So they could do four times the number
of lives, but they have eight times the amount of the com-
pensation. Why? Because in the prospecting process, from
doing a lot of prospecting, they just bump into more cases
because of the activity.
And there’s this perception: Don’t work harder; work
smarter. My sense has been, it’s always work smarter and
harder. And then you develop the lives that generate that
type of activity.
Chung: I can validate that. Marv just said it’s a bunch more
zeros. It really is true. When I attended my first Top of the
Table meeting, I think I wrote 600 lives that year. And I met
people at that meeting who did it on 20 lives. And, at that
point, I had never sold a million-dollar policy. I remember
calling home—it was a meeting in Vegas—and I said to my
dad, “I don’t belong here because I did a small group break-
out session, and they’re talking about premium dollars, and I
hadn’t even sold face amounts that large.” I said, “I don’t be-
long here; I think I should leave.” And he said, “The concepts
are the same. It’s just that they’re selling policies with more
zeros.” And it really is true: The sales process is exactly the
same. It’s just that, as Marv said, there are larger problems. I
think many times we limit it. But to me, it’s more about ac-
tivity than policy size. And, when I started, my goal was one
app a week, and I didn’t care how big or small it was. It was
just the activity, because the size will come with it.
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Audience Question: I’m pretty new in the business. I’m
less than two years. My question is, with all of your experi-
ences and all of your knowledge, if you’re going to redo
it, what would be your first three months’ or six months’
business plan?
Feldman: If I were to start over again, I would go back to law
school, but not to be an attorney. I wouldn’t want to prac-
tice law. But I can tell you, if you’re dealing with somebody
who is an attorney and they’re in this business, they carry a
tremendous amount of weight and respect. And I thought
about going back to law school when my daughters were in
law school just to get the degree. So if I were planning it
again, I would go back and start in law school, get the degree,
and then I would go right into personal production. But I
would continue to prospect in the business market because
the problems are there. And they’re bigger problems. So I’d
like to write those types of cases, more of those cases, more
zeros on the cases, more zeros on the premiums. That’s where
I would concentrate my prospecting, and that’s how I would
develop my business.
Audience Question: You both touched on this quite a bit,
but I also joined my father in the business. And one thing I’d
like to hear a little bit more from you is, how did you navigate
the differences in your styles when you were both working on
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the same case at the same time? How did you negotiate that,
or how did you work with that?
Chung: I really didn’t do any joint cases with my dad be-
cause he was a manager. But I do have a business partner.
And Brian is 14 years younger than I, so obviously our styles
are very different. But the reason we’ve been together now
for 10 years, the reason it’s worked, is our values are exactly
the same. But the way we approach the business is very dif-
ferent. He doesn’t use paper at all. He thinks it’s really cool
to do his entire presentation on an iPad and then to email
his client the disk, the fob—whatever—the file. I still use
paper. But it works.
I still remember the first day he came into the office. He
said, “Why do you have a pencil sharpener?” I said, “Because
that’s how you sharpen pencils.” The second day he walked
in with a mechanical pencil, and he said, “This is what we
use.” I tried it, and it doesn’t work. It’s invigorating to have
a young person in the office because he makes me question
things. And, for our clients, I always tell them they benefit
because they get two perspectives, but the right answer is in
the middle. So I see it as a plus not a negative.
Ashe: And with that I would like to thank you all for your
kind attention and our presenters for being so open in all the
things that help to make them successful.
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