Darren Sugiyama

After starting his career as a counselor in a gang prevention program in his home town of Long Beach, Calfornia, Darren Sugiyama decided to follow his entrepreneurial dreams and started his own employee benefits firm in 2003 called Apex. During his first year in the insurance business, his personal income for the year was only 277 USD (he proudly displays his personal tax return on the wall of his office). But just seven years later, Apex was producing over 37 million USD in annual sales and was the #1 producing firm in the country for HealthNet, Kaiser Permanente, and Colonial Life, concurrently. In 2010, Darren launched a supplemental insurance firm called Pacific Bay Insurance Group with his wife Emilia. In their second year, Pacific Bay won Agency Of The Year Award from Colonial Life, producing 57% of all new business clients for this carrier in the Orange County and San Bernardino territory, combined. Darren later expanded his insurance business portfolio, building a life insurance agency called DaVinci, which was responsible for 25% of all the life insurance policies sold for Pacific Life in Orange County, California in 2017. In 2018, DaVinci was responsible for 29% of the all the life insurance policies sold for Penn Mutual in Orange County, and in 2019, over 38%. In addition, Darren founded Lionsmark Capital in 2016 which is now one of the most dominant premium financing intermediary firms in the life insurance industry, offering not only unique lending options, but also developing proprietary 8-figure life insurance solutions to deca-millionaire-to-billionaire clients across the country. Lionsmark is endorsed by investment advisory firms, life insurance agencies, and carriers. Darren is also an internationally acclaimed 11-time author with published works being distributed in Australia, Brasil, Canada, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. As a nationally acclaimed motivational speaker, business coach, and mentor, Darren does both live and virtual motivational speaking events, as well as private coaching sessions, teaching others how he built his businesses using extremely unorthodox methods.