- 11,280
I'm not fussing about anything. I simply stated the obvious.
G
Guest
Guest
Sure. I believe that. I really do. There is no doubt in my mind. You have a lot of friends on this board. I don't have any. I guess the "obvious" here is that you are a really good man as well as a top agent. I (we) salute you.
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lifeagent426
Expert
- 23
What's obvious is that you're only a legend in your own mind and that while you're capable of many things, you're not very good at one enough to get to the top of a field with laser focus. Must be why you and crabcake get along so well.
- 14,808
Interesting. I'm not sure I got to "the top" of the field while selling individual health, but I did place $750K in premium each year for 6 years. At 20% average comp that's not bad. It also got me some nice trips for production. I even met a few people on this board from some of those trips.
I started the IHIAA and figured maybe 50 or so would join. Over 1,000 joined and at $20 per month with a "cancel anytime" and "$1.00 first month dues" policy that's not bad. It was good enough for someone here to want to emulate it though they never emulated its success. I took down the IHIAA with plenty of due-paying members post-reform. One reason was I couldn't take $20 per month and tell someone from the heart that I believed they could make a good living in the indie market anymore. Good news though, you can still pay $20 a month through another association that believes post-indie health is alive and kicking.
I wanted out of the insurance field. Why? 'cause I did - that's why. But starting a website business was no different than my start in health - a huge learning curve. I struggled, had the wrong biz model, PO'd a few clients but made it right.
My sole focus now is building that business with finally the help I need to do it in the correct manner. If you think it won't be successful, that's your problem, not mine.
I wish I had the same mental energy to care about your life and what you do, but I'm not a mental case.
G
Guest
Guest
The problem with guys like ... well you know who the are.. and a bunch of others is that they want everyone to love them and believe that they are a great success in this business. They want respect, but do little if anything to earn it... at least not the old fashioned way by helping others.
They post anonymously, are almost always nasty, and they build themselves up by tearing the rest of us down.
John is successful in business and in life. I'm successful in business and in life. There are others here are are also successful in business and in life. BUT there are a lot of guys here who really, really, really resent the success of others.
That's what we constantly see here... anyone who does well is "suspect." Remember how Frank got "beat up" by people here? Remember how John was recently drawn and quartered here? There are lots of examples of how a few malcontents are here for basically one reason... to be nasty.
No one really knows if guys like... well I won't mention names... are successful or if they are even in the insurance biz. We take their word for it.
If if others want to believe they are successful men, fine. But I don't. Successful men don't act the way they do.
Believe them if you wish. I see it differently. As Reagan said, "Trust, but verify."
You look at the attitudes these men have to those here who have demonstrated some success and you just have to wonder why they say the things about others that they do.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer and I'm sure others here do as well. They are losers. If they can't win, no one else should either.
It's been like that on this board for a long time. These guys don't celebrate the victories or wish others (like John or me or Josh) well. You don't hear them ever say a nice thing about someone, especially someone like John who is one of the most successful businesses men on this board.
It's too bad these men are the way they are, but as the kids say today, "It is what it is." They are whom they are.
Those of us who have been on this board are used to it. For those of you who are new... well you are seeing the ugly side of some of your colleagues. You will find a lot of insurance guys to be just like these guys, so get used to it.
They post anonymously, are almost always nasty, and they build themselves up by tearing the rest of us down.
John is successful in business and in life. I'm successful in business and in life. There are others here are are also successful in business and in life. BUT there are a lot of guys here who really, really, really resent the success of others.
That's what we constantly see here... anyone who does well is "suspect." Remember how Frank got "beat up" by people here? Remember how John was recently drawn and quartered here? There are lots of examples of how a few malcontents are here for basically one reason... to be nasty.
No one really knows if guys like... well I won't mention names... are successful or if they are even in the insurance biz. We take their word for it.
If if others want to believe they are successful men, fine. But I don't. Successful men don't act the way they do.
Believe them if you wish. I see it differently. As Reagan said, "Trust, but verify."
You look at the attitudes these men have to those here who have demonstrated some success and you just have to wonder why they say the things about others that they do.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer and I'm sure others here do as well. They are losers. If they can't win, no one else should either.
It's been like that on this board for a long time. These guys don't celebrate the victories or wish others (like John or me or Josh) well. You don't hear them ever say a nice thing about someone, especially someone like John who is one of the most successful businesses men on this board.
It's too bad these men are the way they are, but as the kids say today, "It is what it is." They are whom they are.
Those of us who have been on this board are used to it. For those of you who are new... well you are seeing the ugly side of some of your colleagues. You will find a lot of insurance guys to be just like these guys, so get used to it.
- 11,280
al3 said:
I like your post. I was waiting to read the word cloaked in there but was very disappointed...
- 14,808
If we're all being honest here, then let's be:
I had a blast selling health when selling health was enjoyable - almost fun if you can believe it.
Then it didn't become enjoyable. At that point you make a life choice on whether or not you're going to sell "anything" as long as it's in the insurance filed without regard to the quality of your life.
If you wake up every day and can't wait to sell insurance, you're in the right field. I had that feeling once. If you wake up and don't look forward to selling insurance then you're doing a disservice to...well...basically everyone.
Some people can do just about anything devoid of true passion for it. Money is money. I'm not that guy.
I had a blast selling health when selling health was enjoyable - almost fun if you can believe it.
Then it didn't become enjoyable. At that point you make a life choice on whether or not you're going to sell "anything" as long as it's in the insurance filed without regard to the quality of your life.
If you wake up every day and can't wait to sell insurance, you're in the right field. I had that feeling once. If you wake up and don't look forward to selling insurance then you're doing a disservice to...well...basically everyone.
Some people can do just about anything devoid of true passion for it. Money is money. I'm not that guy.
G
Guest
Guest
Same here. I loved selling IFP and small group. I got into it because around 2005 much of the kind of computer coding I did went off-shore. I also burned out of the corporate rat race.
My dad was an agent for 45 years.
Over the years I had written code for a lot of insurance companies and regulatory agencies (I met my wife at Blue Shield where we both worked in 1977) and so I knew the business fairly well... and I was good at sales... being self-employed for a long time.... you learn to sell yourself... or starve!
In 2006, selling IFP and small groups was easy and it paid well. Rates were affordable, UW was not all that strict, and there was a lot of biz out there. I loved it. Easiest thing I ever did... until the 2009 crash and then the MLR came along in 2011. Since Jan 2011 when comp went to almost nothing I and a lot of agents moved to life and Medicare. I love the hell out of Med Supps, but it is a more difficult market since you can't call seniors directly (like we could selling to small biz) and every agent and their Obama-hating dog is in the Medicare game.
Unlike most here, I never sold insurance full-time but the 15 to 30 hours a week I put into it was both fun and lucrative "back in the day."
A website (that is the kind our little 3-person company does... perhaps not the kind you might want) takes me about 4 hours. I can do 4 websites a week at $500 a pop... for 40 weeks a year. I can work in the morning and be on the golf course at 2:30 pm many days. (Of course there are marketing tasks, but much of that done online at night.... being active in small-biz chat groups, Linked-In forums, and doing some drip marketing.)
We do sites for "budget conscious" small businesses. We also sort of specialize in book authors and publishers (both usually hand-to-mouth operations.)
John's paradigm is much the same, except he will do more customization than we do. He is not a competitor but a colleague. There is plenty of work out there.
My two partners and I have great "creds" in the literary world and we can easily market to self-published book authors (some 30,000 of them out there)
I'm sure John, with his knowledge and association contacts can "own" the insurance agent market. (Believe me, poor book authors are a lot easier to work with than rich 'prima donna' insurance agents!!)
I love the hell out of selling Medicare (since I'm about a month away from it myself I'm getting to sell to many friends I've known for the 30 years I've lived in this house) but I also like doing websites, mainly because I can do them when I want... morning, midnight, whatever.
I wonder if some of the flack John, I, and others are taking has to do with the idea that many of you were never taught the concept of having "multiple wealth centers."
Maybe its a generational thing. Thirty five years ago when I left EDS to be self-employed one of the "big things" was to have several "businesses" so that if one didn't work so well, another would. I guess that concept is out of vogue now but it has always worked for me.
I've failed at most of the businesses I've started. Many were ill-conceived in the first place and others required more dedication than I wanted to devote.
I guess the paradigm today for you younger guys is "all in" ...or "nothing." That's why some of you are implying that because someone doesn't do insurance full-time that they're not successful at it.
I like having three or four businesses, especially those that give me a passive income like insurance renewals and my recur-billed Jaya123 web service. Selling e-books on Amazon also does not require inventory or full-time attention (hire a good publicist) and doing websites is a piece of cake... I could teach most intelligent, tech-savvy people how to do it in a week (and one thing I'm looking at doing is training our "own" contractors to do sites for us.)
IF we are successful.... I can see us doing 100 sites a week with a staff of 20 developers... trained by us... following our "developer's 'play-book'" and paid quite well (no off-shore slave labor... $60/hr. for working at home in their t-shirts (or halter-tops since, like my partners, many web developers are women.) That's still good money in America.
So yeah, some of you agents can pick John and I apart for not being "all in" as insurance "guys" but I hope the rest of you understand that there are "horses for courses" and that there are those who pursue a different career/business paths.
To paraphrase the late Steve Jobs, some of us just see things "different" than the rest of you.
YMMV
Al
- 11,280
Al I scanned the previous post and still did not find the word cloaked. I'm very disappointed....
