Income protection with Disability Insurance

(intro)

Beyond the Challenge is a podcast where executives in the insurance and financial services industry share their insights and experiences. Hosts Kevin and Sandy Dougherty talk with today’s top business leaders about what keeps them up at night and the biggest opportunity organizations can capitalize on today. We encourage you to listen, share, and subscribe to our program.

Kevin and Sandy Dougherty each have over 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services, corporate leadership, and executive search. They’re the owners of Global Corporate Solutions and Global Corporate Leaders. Global Corporate Solutions partners with organizations to gain efficiencies and contain costs. Global Corporate Leaders partners with organizations to enhance and evaluate talent.

Beyond the Challenge podcast is sponsored by Exactuals, perfecting payments and the data driving them; Techficient, transforming the protection journey with intelligent data and machine learning to drive better outcomes; and JourneyGuide, improving your clients’ retirement outcomes through interactive planning software.

Welcome to Beyond the Challenge. Here are your hosts, Kevin and Sandy.

(interview)

Kevin: Today, we’re talking with Brian Lauber, Senior Vice President Disability Income at Ash Brokerage. Brian has served as an advisor, a wholesaler, regional VP, Chief Marketing Officer, just to name a few of his roles over his career. In his role at Ash Brokerage, Brian works with field distribution to increase awareness about income protection for individuals, business owners, and their employees. Brian, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the industry?

Brian: Good morning, Kevin, and thank you and Sandy for letting me have this opportunity to visit about something I think we both is really important. Kind of give you my background, I kind of came into the insurance business almost by accident. I was getting ready to graduate from college and I was doing interviews and I actually was interviewing with other companies and I interviewed with an insurance company as the counselor told me to do it kind of as a warmup. So, long story short, that warmup ended up being what I decided to do because it sounded more interesting than actually selling copiers and copy materials for a printing company that was going to make me move away from the Midwest. So, I fell into the insurance business by accident as an advisor and, as they can say, the rest is history.

Sandy: Thanks, Brian. 

Brian: Yeah.

Sandy: All sectors face challenges, but for the insurance industry, the list seems to be especially long. Many carriers seem to be struggling to stay relevant while others are embracing new technology, reimagining distribution channels, and developing strategic partnerships. From your experience, how can carriers and BGAs embrace innovation and transformation to improve performance and drive their long-term growth?

Brian: You know, that’s a great question because when I look at the carrier and BGA relationship, first, I’ll say the ones that are innovative will be the ones that continue to grow and actually weather what I call the distribution storm we have right now. I thought about this question a little bit more than the others because it appears to me that we’re at a kind of a crossroad with the BGAs and the carriers in the industry. It used to be thought that the BGAs’ role was to provide illustrations and support for underwriting and almost in handling the process. With technology, that’s gone away. So I think it’s a good time for the carriers and BGAs to be thinking about what is our relationship and how do we each add value to the consumer and make it a thriving business, and I think that’s where some of the BGAs are struggling. I mean, to be very candid, we have an aging BGA distribution platform. Very few have the capability even to do their own commission accounting. So if you look a lot at how things was done, they expected the carrier to do it and the carriers would do all the backroom support, the underwriting, do the commissions. They would service all that. Well, there’s pressure on the carriers because of their cost. They’re looking to shift that cost now to the BGA because of technology and what value does a BGA bring if they aren’t doing any of that. Some carriers are going direct, that part of it. So I think it’s really important that both the carrier and the BGA look, first of all, how can they be innovative and attract more distribution themselves but I think they have to do it on a very thoughtful process because if they’re not innovative and investing in technology, they may have long-term growth but they’re not making as much profit, there’s a lot of pressure on margins, and the carriers can’t afford to keep paying BGAs the same way they used to pay them if they’re not taking some of that burden off like they used to. I think it’s a really interesting time and it may cause a little friction between the BGAs and carriers but I did this, I took a step back and forget about the way we used to do it, how should the model be going forward? And they have to continue to innovate that or some of them are going to die a slow death.

Sandy: Thank you. So how is Ash Brokerage handling tech debt and investing in new technology?

Brian: Well, I’ve talked to you guys about this and one of the main reasons we are going to be a factor in the marketplace is because of technology. I think you did an interview with Tim Ash a while back and one of the attractions to me was here’s my role and I’ve helped a couple major DI companies build their disability platforms. I would get in line for resources, which is money, IT time, and everything else. I would lobby to get on other people’s projects, so the other product lines, we would get together. And based on corporate needs, the carrier that they wanted to drive the most or grow the most would get a bigger allocation of IT resources and the time and energy and money. And the rest of us got what was kind left over or if we could catch on to another project. I mean, I shared this week at a national conference, I felt like a lobbyist at one time because I had a small product line, disability income, and the major parts of the organization had projects going on so I’d go talk to them to see if I could be part of it or get a little bit of it or just kind of hook on. I felt like the little brother that want to tag along with his other brothers and sisters that, like, come along might get us a ride with you. Ash Brokerage has a separate company that they own that is all their technology. Even with Integrity Marketing buying us, that still is a separate company. So imagine being in the way I used to work, meaning the person runs the IT company and he kind of lays out a vision for the DI product line and I don’t have to wait in line for anything. It’s a matter of just prioritizing what we need to do to bring better customers to our service. And I’ll give you an example. Several years ago, it was not uncommon for someone to drop a ticket and get annuity application kind of automatically filled out. So they call it drop ticket and it’s app fulfillment. I think we’re the only BGA in the country that does that on any scalable basis and it’s all because of the technology situation. And the idea came about because DI is an ancillary product, you’ve got people doing life and annuities, and they already had that capability. Someone says, “Well, why don’t we have it for DI?” so they built it. If I would have tried to get that through a major carrier, it would have been a minimum of two years and no one else has that capability. So it’s because of that, that’s one example of why technology separated from your core business, I think, is a brilliant strategy and it’s one that makes me excited. We’re looking at doing some things. I can share that one because we do it. We’re looking at doing a couple other things that aren’t being done in the industry right now, in the DI industry. We’ll be the innovators are the leaders in it and I really believe it’s because they don’t have a technology restriction. As you can tell, I get excited about that part of it.

Kevin: Very much so. Brian, what is the biggest challenge facing disability income insurance today?

Brian: Well, there’s a limited number of carriers, Kevin. We don’t have enough competition to keep us sharp. And it’s not just one thing. I’m excited as new carriers are starting to get ramped up and get in this business. Actually, it will help us a lot. It’s not new competition because we are not meeting the consumer need. We’ve been too product centric. A lot of organizations have really gone after the more of just the physician market, high-end and that market. It was a contract leap or issuing a participation increase when I really think there’s other opportunities in the marketplace and I really believe the carriers need to broaden their view of the market. Still write to doctors and the high-end income earners, but I think there’s a lot of people that could broaden and get it. And they’ve got a distribution challenge. I know one carrier, their top 10 BGAs do 54 percent of their business. And of that 54 business, over 80 percent of it is physicians. So when you think about that, that has served us well in the past but if you’re one dimensional with one distribution channel with one occupation that heavily, that’s a very dangerous situation to be in because, as we know, all occupations up and down with claims and profitability and whatnot, so I’m encouraging the carriers to not be so product centric, look into the business market, look for the executives and professionals, come down a little market because of the fact that it’s profitable business and that’s what it’s all about. I think that would be — when you fight for a limited market, you tend to pay too much for it and you make exceptions or make your product too competitive. That’s not a good recipe for long-term profitability.

Kevin: Brian, what do you see as some of the biggest opportunities for disability insurance providers over the next three to five years?

Brian: One of the biggest opportunity, I think, for us is to communicate the consumer need. The consumer need outweighs our ability to meet it dramatically. I think we’re going to do that through social media. We’ll make it easier for the advisor to write in the business insurance market. As you know, all businesses have benefit requirements. It’s that time of year, it’s October, and what do we usually do in October? What do all employees do? We sign up for our benefits. So, if you think about that and most people doing that and it’s usually is because of the, I don’t want to say the average employee but other than the professionals, there are literally millions of people that don’t understand even what they’re signing up for their employee benefits. Even if they do, they feel a little uncomfortable. There’s no guidance or advice given to them. So I think that opportunity to reach the masses with the need for income protection makes total sense. I also think the other opportunity is, I talk about this a lot when I talk to financial planning, there are a lot of financial planners and a lot of conversations about retirement and distribution of income and I’ve boiled it down to a simple explanation. Financial planning is basically people gathering assets so that they have a stream of income when they retire so they can live comfortably. And most people, that’s what they want to do. You ask all the financial planners. So I think the financial planners out there, that’s a huge opportunity for us. So it’s an easy question, if you were the financial planner, Kevin, is your customer in their earnings years or are they looking at the distribution years? And what do they need? If someone told me and I thought about it, I’m of that age, I started thinking about what streams of income I need when I retire, well, that’s the stream of income I need when I’m working. So it’s an easy transition, if you get someone to talk about the future because it’s not so threatening is to bring them back. So our ability to work with financial planners and explain that the income, the importance of income, and then income protection, before and during after retirement kind of makes sense. As you know, people buy annuities and stuff like that to protect their stream of income, they buy long-term care on the risk side of it, then it’s just an easy question. What’s your income continuation plan? Your own income continuation plan, and most people say, “I have it at work,” then you review their group benefits. It sounds really like common sense or easy but, right now, you’re going to see a little social campaign from Memphis, you’re signing up for your benefits, what’s the most important benefit? They’ll probably say health insurance, but the problem with that is that that means you think you could get hurt or sick. Well, actually, your income is more important than health insurance. Your ability to continue to receive your income, because if I didn’t have health insurance, as long as I get back to work and pay it, I could pay my bill off. But if your income stops, everything else stops. So you’ll see a little bit — take a different approach and even though people are so busy during benefit enrollment, I think that’s a good time for a reminder to say, “Here’s the need.”

Kevin: Brian, how do you see distribution changing over the next few years?

Brian: Okay, this is kind of a hot topic and I just spoke about this at the International Disability Income Society Meeting. It’s something I’ve been watching. First of all, we all have to be students of the business. And I work for one product line, disability income or income protection, but as I’ve mentioned to you, its own distribution island, not there all by itself. We’re part of a bigger organization or a bigger industry called the financial service industry. And here’s what’s been happening and I’ll even go so far to say what I think is going to continue to happen. There’s been serious consolidation going on in the financial service industry. Let’s start with BGAs. The number of BGAs has gone down. There’s been consolidation, the bigger getting bigger and the smaller looking for partners to be strong because size does matter in our business because center management means the whole thing that your cost of doing business can go down, give economy of scales. The BDs don’t have that so those are being consolidated. Banks have been consolidated over several years. I mean, I had some stats on that but we’re down over 40 some hundred banks in the United States of America and in 2000 we had over 8,000. Consolidation. You have the movement, you have — well, let’s finish those. Property and casualty. You see a property and casualty company or a small agency, a BGA, being bought almost every week if you’re out on LinkedIn, so the consolidation is continuing to happen and a big impact has been private equity in our business. A few years back, private equities had less than 5 percent control or ownership in the insurance financial service industry. It’s pushing 25 percent already in a very, very short period of time and it looks like it’s going to continue to grow. The thing that’s been growing is registered investment advisors. That number is up over 14,000. And we’re going to talk about compliance a little bit later so I don’t want to jump in too much but why did they move to the IRA platform? Why did they move to that platform? A lot of it, you talk to all the advisors, they wanted independence, they wanted fee based, they wanted less compliance, and so they went out. Even some of those found early on when they went out they had to consolidate to get — a bigger shop can have more revenue, better services, and a whole bunch of other things. So there’s been a little consolidation but mainly growth in the IRA market. Benefit firms are being consolidated. So, I’ve seen consolidation all across our industry, and the impact of private equity, everybody is kind of going, “What’s that mean?” One history lesson, though. If you look at what’s happening with the private equity people buying our business, I know it’s different but it’s similar to what happened many years ago, not many years ago, we’ll both think it was a long time ago. Remember demutualization of mutual companies and we all were wondering, “What’s this mean? Why are the companies doing it?” Well, they wanted access to capital in the open market so they went public. Even some of those companies that have gone to stock ownership have private equity investments in them now. So, we aren’t going to change that but we must watch it, pay attention to it, see who’s going to get merged and who’s more likely to happen. Was demutualization bad? Well, we all kind of wonder, did it help the consumer? Did it do the right thing? But it raised capital for those carriers. A lot of insurance carriers have a lot of small margins fixed cost so they’re looking for capital. So, I kind of use, the analogy is not exactly the same as the private equity folks in our business is similar to what happened when we demutualized and that’s what people are asking about private equity. Is it bad? Is it good? Well, I think as long as you have a growth mode in mind, it’s good. If your buying to aggregate and sell off, that may not be so good. But just like the demutualization, whoever has the better strategy in the private equity market is going to win.

Sandy: What advice would you give to carriers who are working with independent producers or those independent advisors?

Brian: I mentioned earlier, I think, we’re too product centric. I really think training and education is going to be a key factor. And in the past, what carriers have done is they walked in and said, “I know you’re doing assets under management or I know you do this or do that,” and they try to get them to move away from their core business model. And I don’t think we can do that. I’ve been a proponent of promoting — I shared this this week, is educate and train advisors and get on their selling system. Quit trying to get them to change what they do because they’re successful. I mean, imagine this conversation, I walk into a gentleman who has assets under management that generates enough income that he’s comfortable and I want him to stop doing that and focus on income protection. That’s a tough sell and that’s not going to happen. That’s why a lot of advisors don’t do it. But maybe here’s a different approach. Can you show me your business? Show me the software you use? And show them where income protection is in that software and instead of going off season, why don’t we do it every annual review for any customer under the age of 45, you already have the data, and do your annual review and show them if they need income, they’re still gathering assets, we need to protect their income. It is financial planning. It is the core fundamental part of financial planning because without income, unless you inherit all your money or don’t need to work for it or you’re financially full, it’s critical, absolutely critical. And if they still don’t want to do it, I’m sure there is a young adviser who is learning trying to gather assets under management who will do it for him. I think it’s the cornerstone of financial planning and most will agree but we don’t sell this product anymore. I’m in the behavior modification business to get advisors to take a step outside their comfort zone, to do something that’s not in there. I spent a lot of time learning their software. We do have a lot of international accounts so what I’ve been doing is going through each one of them, I want to see their selling system, and then we can talk intelligently to them about, “Hey, on page 6, this is where you put in this and you hit a button and —” most of the software parameters will generate a need for income protection. It’s just that they’re so programmed, some of them don’t even have it turned on. So it’s behavior change. That’s the fun part of our job because I think advisors appreciate it and they really understand. They know their customer needs it.

Sandy: Wonderful. And we talked about this a little bit earlier but what is Ash Brokerage doing to stay relevant in the disability landscape?

Brian: I’m going to throw in a term that I stole out of a book I read probably 20 years ago called High Tech/High Touch. So I talked about the tech things that we’re capable of doing up to and including app fulfillment, we can do side by side comparison for carriers, we can show them the need based selling, and all that, that’s all kind of a tech and a process. I think right now in the world we live in, service is at an all-time low. I’m not talking about the insurance business, I’m talking about just in general. If you go anywhere, it appears to me that we have accepted — I call it bad service. I don’t know if you go out to eat or go do anything or travel. I’ve had some really bad experiences lately and these are from establishments that I never thought would give me this bad a service. And I thought about it and, right now, I’m not in my permanent office so I am sitting with our marketers and our internal people and I always heard we had good service from the outside. I think our differentiator is we’re a high tech organization. But I think if you ask any advisor why they work with us, it’s service. We have exceptional service. It is 100 percent advisor centric. They go out of their way to make sure I got the opportunity, I’ve been doing disability income for a long time and I knew some people that I had met years ago that do income protection and they do business with Ash. So I thought, “Oh, I’m new, I’m gonna call them up,” said, “Is there anything we do for you?” every single one of them mentioned service. It wasn’t any of our products, because we offer all of them. It was great, you know, easy to get on your website, but when they call, even if this person doesn’t know the answer, they will go find somebody who gets it and get it to them and I thought of that because I’ve had some bad experience recently with service. And you know what, that’s really what makes us different. We give better service than — I can brag about our compensation capability that probably no one else has, our illustration capability and digitization and stuff, the app fulfillment. I think those are gonna be table stakes at some point in time. Because technology, anybody can have it. So I think it’s a combination of high tech with the human touch.

Sandy: So what is your opinion about the future of regulations and compliance?

Brian: Okay, this is a tough one because our industry as a whole, not disability and the financial service industry, I’ve watched this because I have to because I’ve seen what’s going on with the DOL and everybody’s a fiduciary and suitability and there’s a lot that has gone on in our industry that I understand what it’s for but I believe we have overregulated our business because of a few bad eggs. Now, most good reputable carriers govern themselves. I mean, they will make sure advisors do stuff right, do paperwork right, and they do what’s in their customers’ best interest. The government has a heavy hand right now, which actually is causing some problems. This is going to be a long-winded answer but I kind of got to go through it. So you start regulating industries so much that it becomes hard to do business. In any business you look at, if it’s been overregulated, it’s stifled the growth of the business. It’s doing to the industry. What happened though was people started dropping their securities license. Thousands of advisors, literally thousands of advisors started dropping their securities license and sell a new product called indexed and now we’re put in a quandary. The carriers are like, “Okay, is indexed, is it a security? Is it a fixed product?” so this whole thing happens. So, literally thousands of advisors migrated away from the securities business to get rid of it but they’re selling indexed products and it starts to look very similar to an investment product. You have literally thousands of advisors moving to RIA models, which are not regulated like a broker dealer. So, innovators will outthink regulators every single time. They’ve figured that out. But let’s get back to the core reason we need regulation. It’s to protect the consumer. But when you get to the point where you protect them so much that they can’t get access to the product and something that was good, then you’re not really doing the consumer any good. You’re protecting them too much to the point where you’re actually harming them. To open a brokerage account, I’ve done this, 62 pages of paperwork with a phenomenal amount of stuff and that’s before I even changed and choose the investments. The advisor I used, I went through it, it was probably more than I had to do for a mortgage, I know it’s very, very important, but the amount of paperwork and redundancy and double checking when I wanted to do something that was good for myself seemed a little cumbersome and the innovators will continue to innovate but then it puts us in an awkward position. If I’m not regulated by the SEC or FINRA, are they eventually going to try to regulate all the RIAs? What will happen? I don’t know. And then indexed products, will they try to make them come underneath the broker dealer and be regulated and secured? But I just think that we got to have a better balance of where we’re at and I think the regulation is actually hurting it. I even look at the small business owners, I’ll give you an example, another regulation coming, I just moved in the state of Colorado, in January of this year, 2023, if you don’t have a 401(k), they’re going to force you and charge you, the employer, if you have over 10 employees, they’re going to force you to buy a 401(k) for your employees. Now, that’s a regulation that — now, the government’s going to run, they run social security, they’re going to be running your 401(k), the investments for it and define everything if you have more than 10 employees. No offense but that should be done by financial professionals that no small businesses, and imagine being a 10-employee company trying to get help with your government-ran 401(k). That is a little scary to me, no offense to the government, but I think that’s a little overreaching in the regulation of a business owner. Here’s what’s going to happen. It’s already happening. Everybody is going to be 1099 so you’re going to force a business owner, which are already having a hard time keeping employees, the great resignation everybody’s talking about, right? Well, I think there’s tools out there that businesses can use to retain employees. I think employees want to be respected, treated well, and a good benefit package so if something happens, they don’t lose everything they have. So health insurance, group disability, life insurance, all the core things they need, they can get through a business owner. If we force them to all be the 1099, they’re not going to take care of themselves. So, in the long run, what if I don’t have any coverage, health insurance, no life, no disability income, no benefits at all, some 1099, if I go to the hospital, who’s going to pay for that? If I become disabled, am I going to go claim on Social Security? I mean, or am I going to be dependent on the government since I don’t have any of those benefits? So I say that and I don’t know how this is going to change. I mean, I’m sure there’s people doing that, but I don’t believe forcing people with regulations to do things is a good thing to do. Luckily, the disability business is not heavily regulated but all of my customers in the securities business are. That’s another reason I encourage them to sell non-securities products. They’re not regulated. As long as you do a good job and you do the right thing, it’s additional revenue for you if all of a sudden there’s a new regulation that comes in. It’s gotten to the point where they’re going to tell people what they can charge to do some of these products. That’s not the free market. I’ll just put it this way. I’ve got a financial planner, I know what I get charged, I think he’s worth every penny. If I wanted someone to do the right job for me, I didn’t go with the cheapest. And if we force people to charge less than what we feel is right, the government’s like, “This is what we think you should charge,” well, that market won’t get served anymore because the advisor is going to say, “I can’t make money doing it, why would I do it?” So we really help the consumer. So, hey, I got to get off the tangent because I could go on that for all day long because I’m concerned that what it’s meant to do it is actually hurting them. Because carriers and advisors will exit that market, they’ll go find markets where they can make the margins they need to and get good service. I will pay extra for good service. I don’t go through drive-thru all the time. Sometimes, I want to sit down and actually be waited on and I will find a restaurant where I want to be served while I have the meal. That’s an example. I’m willing to pay a fee to an advisor that helps me when the markets are up and the when markets are down and he knows my personal interests and he earns every penny.

Kevin: That’s a great answer. Brian, what type of strategic partnerships do you see working best for the carriers and BGAS?

Brian: I’ll break it down into a couple categories, Kevin. I mean, I look at national accounts and then we call them strategic partners. So let’s talk about national accounts first. It is a big number of people in. There can be several thousand, upwards of — one we have is 12,000 advisors. There is no way you can penetrate that without senior leadership support. That means both the companies when we have a relationship, we’re dealing with our corporate folks, they support what we’re doing and encourage their advisors do it. Some people put relationships in and just say, “Hey, we have relationship you wanna do, just call them.” Our best ones, the senior leadership supports it and that makes a big difference because it has to be top down. If we try to go in and just call on 12,000 advisors without any introduction or any support from senior leadership, wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t work at all. I think it would be a lot of energy without any return. The other thing is, if you act like a vendor, you’ll be treated like a vendor. If I go in and say, “Hey, I just want you to sell my product,” and it’s a risk product, it’s pretty easy to understand, I think the best partnerships is where we know, I mentioned earlier, senior leadership supports us, we have home off contact with our folks, we learn their selling system, we call on their management at the different levels, I have to fully understand how they all work, how they all get paid, and who’s accountable for who so knowing that customer extremely well, if it’s a GA system, we ask permission to the GA to come in and help them drive revenue. So I’ll sum it up this way: Senior leadership support and knowing your customers’ distribution. On the BGA side, a lot of times, people come to us because we’re large and we have some capabilities they don’t have. Those are good partnerships and their synergy. On the distribution side, they have the distribution capabilities and they have contacts in the marketplace, we have the backroom to support them so we have a lot of relationships. You can call them a BGA or a unit, there’s different terms everybody uses, but I call them strategic partners. Like minded, we want to educate and train and help more advisors sell income protection. Two, they have a skill set that matches one that we have or they don’t have a skill set that matches what we’re doing and they have a skill set. It’s usually they have a distribution pool of a group of advisers and they’re looking for some capabilities they don’t have because they may be a certain size and can’t scale it and we have the scale, the capability to do it. A lot of them coming to us for our technology. I mean, they really are. Our ability to help them in the back room and we have some expertise here. I don’t go into relationships. They come in and they’re doing X amount of business. If we don’t think we’re going to grow it, there’s no real need to form that relationship. So I think the other thing is a lot of people will look for anything, just, “Hey, I don’t care how much you’re doing, let’s just aggregate it all together.” If there’s not a growth component or the wanting to grow, that’s not a good partnership for us. We aren’t looking for people that just want to kind of get out. I mean, we have bought some organizations but most of the organizations that we’ve bought, all our growing organizations. They’re not sunsetting. Would we entertain that? Yes, but that’s not really a partnership, that’s a purchase, because there’s a plan on exiting the business. So most of our partners want to grow, which makes it kind of fun because I have one right now I’m working on and we’re coming together and we’re going to double their business. That’s not mine but with our efforts, our goal is we will declare success when we double their business of income protection. They already do a good job on the other product lines.

Kevin: Brian, what is one of the best decisions you made that had a positive impact on your career?

Brian: I’ve been able to take risk when opportunities presented themselves. I talked about this week a lot at the conference I was at and when they introduce you, they give you all the accolades and tell you all the things you’ve done and I’ve been doing this for a while and I’ve had a couple opportunities, one in particular that we changed the way that income protection was done in the industry and there’s a group of us that can celebrate and say we took part in that. I had that same opportunity again but it came at a risk. So my advice to anybody that wants to expand their career, take calculated risks and bet on people. I’ve thought about it. I’ve worked for quite a few different people and I’ve never left those people but I have left companies and calculated risks, I think, are needed to take and you could easily stick your head down and do 30 years and put my watch in and but that’s not what I needed to do because if I was going to have an impact on this industry, I needed to take those risks. And some people are asking me the same thing. I am moving to a new role, this is my eighth week, it is a calculated risk but the outcome will be we’re going to grow our business significantly and I’m committed to helping the rest of the industry change and think differently and I do believe some of the things we’ll do we’ll get noticed and other carriers then we’ll do it or other BGAs will do it so we’ll change the industry, the way disability is thought of, sold, processed, and serviced, and it starts with the simple conversation, “Do you have an income protection plan?” or, “Have you talked with your customers about an income protection plan?” and you can say that whether they’re working or they’re retired. It fits all financial planning. The other thing I’ve been lucky is people. The other thing, you may even posit, I was always told us that it’s a cliché, hire people that are smarter than you. Well, that’s one that I would encourage people to do, but don’t hire people like yourself. We all have strengths and weaknesses and I didn’t need a whole bunch of Brian Laubers that have the same strengths and weaknesses. So you have to be very aware of your strengths, run with them. I was taught this a long time ago, if you ever played sports, my dad had a different position on it and I taught my kids differently than a lot coaches do. So, if you have some strengths and you have some weaknesses, what happens a lot of the time, a coach will take you aside and say, “Hey, work on these three things because you’re not very good at them.” So I had this experience with my son and here’s what happened, he comes home and he played basketball and when I played with him, he was getting big enough where he could beat me so I had to pay attention to what was going on, but he had some things he was really good at. He’s good. And he’d come home and he want to work on the three things the coach told him that he was weak at. And I said, “Okay, I’ll do that, we’re gonna spend 10 minutes on that and we’re gonna spend 30 minutes what you’re good at.” And he’s like, “Dad, if I don’t spend a lot of time on what I’m not good at,” I said, “Well, you’re gonna get to the point where you’re so good at what you’re good at, you’re going to be great at it. You’re gonna to tell me what you’re gonna do and I still won’t be able to stop you. You’re gonna learn to manage your weakness because you may never — you’ll never gonna be great at your weakness.” I mean, maybe it could, but most athletes, most people, if you have a weakness, and I still hold this, actually, I heard Michael Jordan say it one time so I guess it’s a pretty good source, after it didn’t really resonate with me when my dad told me to do it. “If you manage your weakness and you’re so good you become great at it, no one can stop you.” So that analogy with people with me is this: I’m good at some things, I want to be great at a few things. I can’t be great at everything. But there’s one or two things that would be wonderful in my lifetime to master. I also have weaknesses and I looked for people that were really good where I was weak. And then let them not do it. I was never anybody’s boss. When you set up tiers, I know you need it for reporting standpoint but my approach has always been this: we’re a team. Too many times in the corporate world, no one talks and the best idea may come from the most junior person and no one ever wants to challenge the boss. And with respect, we do this from that standpoint, but I had never had a room where people wouldn’t talk and we would share ideas and get excited and I had this conversation just recently with my new situation, because they’re still wondering who’s the new guy, the boss who I report to and I made it very clear, I am from a reporting standpoint but any ideas, any information you have, you be a student of the business, I don’t want to manage you, I’m not a manager, so I’m encouraging the culture of we’re a team, and I think if we did more of that in the corporate world, we’d have people asking questions in meetings, we’d have more innovation. I mean, this goes back 20 years. One time, the company I was with had a thing that if you made a mistake, they gave you money, because people weren’t trying anything. And I’ll close with this. This week, I get reminded because they read my bio on all the stuff I did, the success you have and it made me sit there and wonder. Not one mention of all the things that I tried when I failed. And you asked me before, I took a lot of risk, Kevin, when I did this stuff and there were a lot of situations we failed at but we came back and made it even better. But there are little failures. I’d rather have a lot of little failures along my career than one big one. And I think we don’t do enough of that because no one wants to make a mistake. Well, you know what, if you’re not making mistakes, then you probably aren’t trying to innovate or do things. And if you make a mistake, you learn from it. People always want to take away from this is that we’re all put on this earth to do something and we do it over and over until we get down to its perfection. There are some things I’ll never do that I’ll never do great. I will make mistakes, but I know my strengths. I’m very persistent and I’m a student of the business.

Sandy: Brian, thank you for your time today. It’s been great to hear your insights and how disability benefits providers can stay relevant and the opportunities you see for the industry in the next few years. Thanks, Brian.

Brian: Thank you, guys. Have a great day.

(outro)

Thank you for listening. Please make sure to subscribe and share so we can stay in touch. If you would like to learn more about how Global Corporate Solutions and Global Corporate Leaders can help your organization recruit the best talent, increase your diversity, and save money, please visit our website at www.thegclgroup.com.