This Is An Outstanding Example Of A Life Insurance Parable

A Parable Explains Why You Do What You Do

They say that wisdom enters through the wound, and the core of the passion to serve is based on life experience both positive and negative and the best advisors seem to have the deepest scars.

The life experience equipped them with the knowledge and the skills to pass onto to other people to help them to move forward.

This experience gives one something interesting to stand up and say rather than;

Hi, I’m Joe Advisor and I sell investment products and life insurance.

They use what has happened to them both personally and professionally, good and bad and use it as a catalyst to pass their experience and passion onto other people.

Re-Engaging My Why by Robert Clark

It’s tough to write a meaningful article with the plethora of information available at our fingertips. Why write about something that’s already been produced?

Perhaps you can extend the information to a new audience who wouldn’t normally access the previous version.

Maybe the other content holds similar information, but fails to put it all together or misses key details?

In this case, it’s neither. In fact, this article isn’t for you… Selfishly, it’s for me.

I’m confident that’s one thing NOT to do when writing an article, so why am I doing it?

A year ago I fell off the bandwagon. By that I mean I was continuing the How & What of my work, but completely lost connection with my Why.

For anyone who follows self-development, you’ll know that success is comprised of three factors.

1. What you do
2. How you do it
3. Why you do it

You’d imagine success is split evenly between the three. However, experts show that the How & What of your business equates to 10% of your success, while the Why holds 90%. I’ll support that statement as an experienced lost soul.

So Why am I writing an article? To simply reconnect with my Why. Because it’s a heavy one.

For those who don’t know, I help producers write income protection plans (Disability Insurance) for their clients with unique situations (high income, risky occupations, poor health, etc).

But WHY do I do this?

I’m 28 years old as of the writing of this piece, and 27 years and 6 months ago, my father was diagnosed with Kinesio – Neuroblastoma, an extremely rare form of cancer.

He would go on to live a fruitful life for the next 21 years while the disease took its course. The hardest parts were witnessing the stress on my Mom, to take care of her #1 supporter, to take care of her family, and to maintain the strong professional success she had achieved.

We were fortunate enough to have one single priority as a family; to support and nurture my Dad’s health throughout his journey. That was it.

Now, at a time and age like this, there wasn’t much I took for granted. If my Dad got out of bed, stood up, and had a smile on his face, it was the best day of my life. There was nothing more rewarding than seeing him smile. However, as it turns out, there WAS one thing I took for granted.

Income.

When you’re a kid, you think everyone is entitled to a house and food, maybe a present or two, and your parents just go to work because that’s what they’re supposed to do. There’s not much transparency in how much money they make, how much the house costs, plus all the costs of raising a family. Even when my Dad wasn’t going to work, we were naïve enough to believe his job must still pay him because, well, they’re nice people.

That was not at all the case.

Unfortunately, many people still live their adult lives thinking an income stream would continue because they work for “nice people.”

During my training at Petersen International in 2013, I learned about something that had more impact on my life than Justin Timberlake’s bleached tips and puka shell necklaces (I’ll email you my 5^th grade photo if you really want to see it).

That was: disability insurance. The exact vehicle that allowed my Mom to focus on her husband’s health, and her family, and not where the next dollar would come from.

Even with two working parents, and my Mom being the breadwinner, it wouldn’t have been enough to continue living the life we were accustomed to.

Then, 23 at the time of my training, I realized why I was put into that room for an interview, and why the stars aligned for me to exit motocross and enter the world of income protection.

Now, 5 years later, I’ve spoken before large audiences, hosted hundreds of team trainings, sat hand and hand with advisors and their clients, and implemented DI for some of the largest corporations in today’s economy. I didn’t do it for the numbers, I didn’t do it for the sales goals… I did it because I’ve lived the life of a family who suffered through terrible news, and terrible times, but thankfully, we were never left wondering where our next dollar would come from. My father owned a substantial disability insurance policy, and that made all the difference over those 20+ years of treatment.

So why am I writing this article? As I mentioned, a year ago I lost sight of my Why. We went on to produce another record year of sales, including surpassing the largest case ever written by Petersen International, but at that point I had fallen in love with the numbers; the How & the What.

To produce at those levels requires an extreme amount of diligence, travel, and mental fortitude. With my focus set on those tasks, I was no longer having the conversation out of love for someone’s family and financial well-being, but instead I was merely following the process.

I’m writing this article to take my mind off of the How & What, and to reconnect with the feelings I remember growing up with a disabled Dad, my Why. That disability insurance policy brought us more than a monthly check… It brought us happiness, cherished moments, and time that I’ll never be able to get back. Instead of an illness tearing my family apart, it brought us closer together than any other family I’ve met to this day.

I know there’s hundreds of thousands of other families who are (or have been) facing a similar situation. I only hope that someone was smart enough, brave enough, to talk to them about disability insurance before-hand.

Single-handedly, I could help thousands of individuals with their income protection needs. But thousands isn’t enough in a growing world of billions. That’s why I’ve chosen to plant my feet deeply in the broker channel. If those thousands of individuals are the ones who help thousands of others with their income protection needs, then my effort can spread to an exponential number.

THAT is where I can create the greatest impact.

My Why has evolved into educating as many income-earning professionals as humanly possible about their income protection needs by inspiring the thousands of insurance agents, employee benefits producers, and financial advisors who help them.

There. That’s it. Over the last 1,000 words, I’ve felt anger, confusion, even a tear or two, but most importantly, inspiration.

If there’s anything you can learn from reading this, it may be this:

1. Disability insurance is a vital component of every earner’s financial foundation.
2. It’s imperative you make disability insurance a part of your process.
3. You won’t actually do it, or you won’t do it well, unless you’re connected to a Why.

I implore you to find your why. Many of us, almost all in fact, know someone who’s faced an illness or serious injury in the past. Some were lucky enough to have the financial support of disability insurance, while others were not. In either case, take a minute to understand the emotional circumstances that person faced, that family faced, and how a process of education can positively impact such an unfortunate circumstance.

If you or someone you know can benefit from sharing my story, please do. Whether it’s a client, colleague, friend or family member, I’d be honored. If you’d like to know more about it, or if you want to talk about educating your clients about disability insurance, you can send me a note here.

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