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Transcript

Unknown: You.

Unknown: Welcome to the Insurance Leadership podcast. This is the last episode of 2025.

Unknown: It has been a great year, and we want to thank you for listening in and sharing and liking all the podcast stuff we put out this year.

Unknown: In today's episode, we'll be pulling the highlights from all the speakers throughout the year. Hopefully you enjoy it and remember a good plan. Today is better than a great plan months from now. Thank you.

Unknown: I'm a huge believer that I'm not in the insurance space. I'm in the people space. And that might sound kind of hokey, but, so many people are sad. They don't like their jobs.

Unknown: They are stretched thin financially, like we're human beings. And so I just I'm like, how do I saddle up next to people and say, I see you, I hear you, I feel you, I'm going to help. I like to just lead almost from the side, if you will. And I've noticed that the more real I can be, and so much of our content and our platform in general is just real, raw.

Unknown: Luke, so many people are used to an insurance person showing up. And when Luke, you know, the, the Russian mobster who it looks like he just got paroled and they're kind of like, oh, that guy's kind of like me. I think I'll listen to him. So I think I just build really quick rapport with people. Because I don't try to blow smoke.

Unknown: I don't try to convince them of anything. I just tell the truth. And that seems to resonate with people in a big way.

Unknown: May

Unknown: Where I went to college, they would have slogans in the classrooms that you would look at in addition to the instructor.

Unknown: And one of those slogans was don't sacrifice permanent on the altar of the immediate. And I think that whenever I had the inclination to look around a little bit and see what else was out there, I came back to the fact that the permanent which is VSP for me, for my the major part of my career, as you said, over 30 years, has been something that I valued.

Unknown: And we're going to get into the reasons for that. But that's probably why I stayed with VSP as many years as they've had me so far. And, you just need to look at things in such a way that you don't see what's happening today, and you get discouraged and you go looking elsewhere. You look at the thing long term.

Unknown: May be.

Unknown: if you look at any of my content, my newsletter, the podcast show notes, I talk about everything publicly.

Unknown: I just, I like I don't want to be an influencer or a thought leader where people look at me and say, you've got 7500 followers on a platform and, and you're, you know, this, this untouchable, like, not human person. I'm very human and I want people to understand that you can get to where I'm at by doing the same things that I've done and and just feeling and being public about it.

Unknown: And I think that's why I'm having success is authenticity is the new digital currency. And I refuse to be anything other than who I am. Yeah, yeah. No doubt. And part of that emotional health is the human experience. Right? Stoicism has a lot of great ideas, but I mean, it's not a full human experience. If you don't feel those range of emotions and learn how to express them.

Unknown: And I as well, short of mid 80s. And so that was not. Yeah. So you press you press your emotions. Don't talk about it. Yes. But as a leader like that's such an important thing to be in tune with your emotions like well I feel fear here. Well maybe this is a bad decision. I should stop for a minute and think about this.

Unknown: Yeah.

Unknown: May

Unknown: I work with brokerages. I work with distributors like yourself. I do agent trainings, but a lot of times I'm not talking directly to the agents. And so that is actually sometimes a little difficult for me because I would like to talk to the agents. You know, you want to talk to the person who's talking to the client.

Unknown: And sometimes, you know, there's 2 or 3 people in between. There's might be a distributor and then an agency and then the agent. And so things get lost in communication. And so that is difficult sometimes. But I think having an open conversation all the time, I try to make myself available as often as I can.

Unknown: I try, to suggest trainings. If I hear a strategy from one brokerage, that they are, you know, comfortable with me sharing with another brokerage. I'll do that. But I think, you know, I just want to be there to answer any questions. I want to be there to be a sounding board for the brokerages.

Unknown: Do you think this would work? Whenever we do, you know, for instance, you know, bonuses or things like that. I'm always asking the brokerage, what do you think would motivate agents? I want there I want communication from that. I want feedback from them. And I think I learned that from working with 150 different carriers.

Unknown: I learned what kind of carrier representative I want to be.

Unknown: May

Unknown: what lessons have kind of shaped your journey thus far with that?

Unknown: My, my biggest piece of advice is probably ignore most advice you get from experts and okay. And that might mean for me as well. But the reason I say that is that if you are starting a company, or you're trying to launch a new business line or you're doing anything that is remotely risky, the odds are that risky, really smart people who don't think that's a good idea.

Unknown: And in fact, if everybody thought it was a good idea, then everybody would be doing it and they would actually be no incremental benefit to starting that company or launching a new product line, or do whatever you have to have some insight into the world, into the product, into the customer base, whatever it might be. You have to have some insight that not everybody in the world agrees with you on.

Unknown: having the conviction to really kind of hold true to what you believe, despite the fact that very smart people that you perhaps respect or that are in a position of greater authority than you are telling you, you you shouldn't do that.

Unknown: It's not a good idea. Is kind of what what that guts is kind of what it takes to do something meaningful. And I think that trickles down into the way that you really start your initiative and the way that you recruit a team, which is being really clear about what you stand for and what you believe in.

Unknown: May

Unknown: I do think in this climate, the only way to lose, the way you're going to lose to all of your competitors as a broker, the way you're going to lose all of your patients as a clinician, the way like your your health is going to suffer as a patient. It's all the same thing. The the guaranteed way to lose is just doing things the way they've always been done, because we are very clear that that that's just not working and it's working increasingly, poorly.

Unknown: But we have the opportunity to innovate and companies are emerging that are innovating. Regulation at a much slower rate is also changing, as you mentioned. And I think that whatever the best future is, whatever the next steps are, they're not going to be what we've been doing. And so staying open and, and willing to investigate and try new things is going to be the only way to survive.

Unknown: May

Unknown: there is a lot of changes happening in the industry. Make sure you stay informed, attend industry events, listen to podcasts, you know, meet with skip levels in your organization to to hear and gather insights, and their perspective on what's happening. But don't stop just at the information collection stage then take action on that.

Unknown: Ultimately, it's up to all of us, to bring those insights, that we gathered from all those different activities and then apply them to the work that we do so that we stay ahead. So stay a lifelong learner, stay informed. And then, you know, act on act on those insights and learnings.

Unknown: May

Unknown: other, movement in the industry that I think you've seen is a lot of, interest in pursuing your vision benefits online.

Unknown: And I think that, we've seen an increasingly, increasing amount of, eyewear in the United States being purchased online, whether you're a consumer with no benefits or whether you're a benefit. Member. Increasingly starting to get their eyewear online. And we think that, right now, at about 25% of the market, for the total U.S. spend, if you put in both, you know, sunglasses, prescription eyewear, contact lenses, you're getting into some pretty high numbers.

Unknown: What do you think is pushing that forward? And I think that, one, I think that vision care in particular, more so than, medical or dental, is a consumer oriented product, for sure, because you're in there. It's there's a fashion sense to it, right? You go to the doctor and you're, and getting a treatment for a medical issue.

Unknown: It's not a really it's there's there's not a fashion sense to that. But if you're getting a vision benefit, it's if there's a fashion sense to it, it's a fun aspect to it. People want to use their vision benefits. And so I think that it lends itself to other consumer goods that have been increasingly, purchased online and digitally.

Unknown: May

Unknown: It's the same old thing over and over again. So it's important to forecast your misery and to think when in the future will you no longer enjoy doing what you want to do? Because that'll keep you motivated to save and invest as much as possible? You know, the personal saving rate in America is about 5%, which means it takes 20 years, 20 years to save one year of financial freedom.

Unknown: I mean, that's crazy. So if you if you work, 60 years, you're going to save three years of financial freedom. That's nuts to me. And then what we saw during the pandemic was that the personal savings rate in America rocketed from 5% to about 35%. So, in other words, it told all of us that we can save more if we want to.

Unknown: We just choose not to. And if you're saving at a 33% clip, for example, that means that every three years you work, you save one year of financial freedom. And if you save at a 50% clip every year you work, you save one year of financial freedom. So really, it's about focusing on when you think you no longer want to do the job that you want to do.

So you can focus on saving, investing as much as possible every single month.

Unknown: there's a buddy of mine who owns a great shop in Alabama. He hires a lot of young people. And, and he's got a lot of older people.

Unknown: And, and he pairs them up where the older guys and the younger guys are paired together kind of touches a little bit. But that way the younger guys can help the older guys with some of the stuff they may not be as good about, but the older guys can help the younger guys kind of think from a business standpoint that they, you know, two years out of college, you know, you're you're not thinking about, you know, any of that type stuff.

Unknown: So it's one of those things, it's a good pair to be able to help go out. And I think realizing that from a leader standpoint is very intelligent and making sure you're pairing them up and they go in pairs together and they're both learning and training together. So off the cuff, that's kind of what I would say to that one.

Unknown: Yeah. Kind of goes back to that mentorship. It does sounds important. It's very important.

Unknown: we all get excited in the beginning first job. But, you know, after five, ten years plus later, we start getting a little bit miserable because it's things are a little bit mundane.