We’re all born into perfection and the challenge we face is to battle back from simply being average. If you refuse to succumb to society’s view of who you should be and what you should do – then you’ve got a shot at legendary – of showing the world what you are made of.

Build a business that does the same, one that offers tremendous value and the lives of others will be forever changed. Maybe they’ll even tell a story about you.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Freedom

The sweet taste of freedom. It’s something we all take for granted, but not Landis Barrow.

For a quarter of his life on this planet, Landis was told when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to eat, when he could go outside, what he could do, and where he could do it. And these weren’t the rules from his mom leaning into Landis as he lived his teen years in Tulia, Texas – no this was something else, this was tougher, this was real and this was hard-core.

This… was prison.

It’s not the way most stories about insurance agents and leaders usually begin, but once you understand the beginning, you’ll realize the ending is about as close to nirvana as you can get, at least for Landis. And his comeback and success at USHEALTH Advisors are a testament to Landis’ resolve and the platform the company provides for anyone, no matter where you come from, to flourish.

“The biggest challenge that I have faced, is because I was incarcerated for a crime I didn’t commit, and I did 11 years in prison,” explains Landis. “It all started back in 1998, in the panhandle where I’m from, a town called Tulia. I have an identical twin brother as well, his name is Mandis. We were both living in this town of about 5,000 people. Was I a saint when I was growing up? You’re talking about 17, or 18 years old. No, I wasn’t. There are some things in life that I’m not proud of and some things in life that I made changes because of my past, but understand we grew up very rough. We didn’t have anyone, no role models, my brother and I were raised by a single mom. There wasn’t much money to be had – so I piddled around with drugs and other stuff in my youth.”

“Well, one day a pregnant woman came up to me and tried to get drugs and that changed my entire mentality. At that point, I looked at this lady, ‘Why are you taking drugs when you’re pregnant?” She walked away. I wouldn’t give her anything. I followed her down an alley and she ended up getting served by another drug dealer. It bothered me for life. And so at that point, I said, you know what? This is not right for me. We made a transition and I moved to Amarillo.”

But so often, the consequences of our actions can come back to haunt us. Although Landis had moved on, his past was about to catch up with him and it would take him years to prove his innocence and his worth.

“A year and a half later, they were doing an investigation in my hometown,” says Landis. “46 people were arrested in this drug sting. And of the 46 arrested, 44 of them knew each other. Now mind you, we’re not talking about a big city, we’re talking about a small community. And so then we had a racist cop, who it was later discovered, planted a lot of drugs on a lot of people, of the 46 people arrested, only two were not black.”

An investigation into the case by the NAACP, the ACLU, and a team of high-profile lawyers led to uncovering much of the wrong-doing by the town sheriff and others. Then Texas Governor Rick Perry got involved as well, demanding the release of all the prisoners. Most were eventually given their freedom. But not Landis, the authorities said there were other reasons to keep him behind bars.

But Landis decided he was taking matters into his own hands. He wanted to prove he also belonged on the outside, rather than simply accepting his fate and living out a major part of his life, 20 years, behind bars.

“Instead of being released in just under four years, like everyone else, I served 11 years before they exonerated me,” says Landis. “I studied the law, six hours a day. I did this for the next seven years and I ended up doing all my own legal research, all of my briefs, and everything else. I got my case back into the criminal courts. The criminal courts were not happy. They sent my appeal back to my trial judge and basically gave them an ultimatum to fix it or else. And so mind you, I’ve done all this extra time, but I went back to the court. I stayed in the county jail for another year waiting on my court hearing.”

“The day of my hearing they had all the publicity, all the news media, and the district attorney was waiting to re-prosecute me. It was real quiet in that courtroom. The judge just told me, “Mr. Barrow, stand up.” “I stood up. And then he pointed at me and made a statement. He said, ‘Mr. Barrow, I apologize for everything that happened to you guys (Landis and his brother).” Mind you, this is the same judge that gave me the 20-year sentence in the first place. And after he apologized, he looked at the district attorney. He said, “Well, I have a statement that I’m going to make to the court.” He said, “I hereby demand no more prosecutorial charges against Landis Barrow. We dismiss all charges.” “I walked out of the courtroom that day. And this is how I was able to eventually get my insurance license. My record is clean.”

Your struggle is your gift that the world will fall in love with. For Landis, his battle back to freedom is one that has made him stronger and his character-building attracted love into his life. Landis met Rachel  Seideman in 2014. The two were wed in June of last year and now are a family, including Rachel’s daughter Samara… making Landis a proud stepfather as well. “My greatest accomplishment is probably me getting married to Rachel,” says Landis, “because that’s something I never thought would’ve happened coming from my background.”

His journey post-prison eventually brought Landis to the doorstep of USHEALTH Advisors, where he was recruited by Jim Schmitt and then worked to become a licensed agent. Rachel joined the company about four years ago, and the two have branded themselves as the Health Insurance Duo. But success at USHA has not come without challenges, especially for Landis.

Though exonerated of all charges, people’s perceptions are sometimes skewed by social media and the opinions of society, instead of grounded in the truth.

“Our first four years or so in this company, that was a big, big pitfall for us,” says Landis. “Because a lot of people, as you know, go to research your name on Google. Then all they see is that I was in prison… but people don’t care about what happened or the end result. They don’t want details on what happened. In fact, Rachel and I were on a call one day at the office. I was actually on a call for one of my agents. I was talking to a guy, who unbeknownst to me at the time was a police officer, and he loved the product. We went through everything and right at the end, he said, “Man, I’m going to look you up.”

“He looked me up online and when the information popped up the first words he said –  I never will forget – and excuse my language, but he said, ‘man, you got f****d.” And I said, ‘Pardon me?’ “He said, “Man, you really got screwed over dude.” He said, “my brother was in a similar situation as you. I apologize. I know it’s pretty tough, but I can’t do business with you.” “Mind you that this is coming from an individual that loved everything we said about the product. He loved my persona. He loved everything about us until he went on Google and looked that information up about me being incarcerated.”

The best who truly live life at a deep and meaningful level, are the ones who face their challenges head-on. Despite the misperceptions and the challenges of his past lingering into the present, Landis has persevered – a human demonstration of strength and will. To date, Landis has produced more than $4-and-half million dollars in personal business at USHA and as a Field Training Agent, has led his team to just over $9-million in production.

But even his entrance into being recruited to the company has its own storyline for Landis. One that is rich with the power of belief.

“After getting out of prison, I had decided to go to college to get a business administration degree,” says Landis.

“Jim Schmidt at the time was the person that recruited me at a career fair. So Jim comes to me and he’s got one of those long legal pads. And he said, ‘I love this company so much, you should join us.” He said, “What I want you to do, I want you to find anything that you can about this company, negative, good, whatever. And if I cannot refute it, don’t take the job. But if I can turn around and show you how great this company is, why I believe in it so much, why you’re going to have an awesome career here then we’ve got a deal? This is how we do it. I’m going to prove it to you.”

“So he asked me, “How much time do you need to do this research?” “I’ll have it in 24 hours, I said.” So he asked me to give him a call the next day and sure enough, I did. I did exactly what he said. I found all the good reviews and the bad ones. I know how people write reviews. And I know what’s legit, and who are former agents, and all that. So at that point, when I contacted Jim again, I was basically in awe. I was like how can a company do this with insurance, I’ve never seen anything like it. And that was inspiring enough, I was excited. I mean, Jim lit a fire under me. And he’s a good friend now, I love him to death. I thought it was an awesome opportunity and so we just took advantage of it.”

An opportunity is just that – what happens with that opportunity is what you make of it – and many times you must think outside the box to make the most of it. Landis and Rachel were no different, as they faced another climb up the mountain of success.

“So a lot of people in this industry have a circle of influence, which is what we pride ourselves on helping agents get off the ground here,” says Landis. When I started, I didn’t have one. Rachel and I ended up living in the Dallas-Ft Worth area, but her dad is five hours away from us in Amarillo, the same place I was living when all hell broke loose. When I started at USHA in 2014, it was face-to-face sales, so we would drive to Amarillo on the weekend, back and forth. And that’s how we did it, knocking on doors in a wealthy community in that town. And that’s how we started soliciting business. I went to a town that crucified me on every level you could think of. And that’s the town where I went to start my insurance business. Because that town knew me, I was in their homes, we had been state athletes. My brother and I set a lot of records there. So I was trying to use that good part as an avenue to get in front of people. 99-percent of the time, it didn’t work. They let me in, but they still didn’t do business with me because of what happened to me.”

Landis says he refused to give up, despite nearly being let go from the company twice because of a lack of production.

Nathan Scott was my Field Training Agent at the time and he saw how tired I was every Monday.  He told me, “this is not going to work for you, man.” “I said, “No, I’m going to do it.” So I would get a paper application. We would get on the road. I would get everything filled out on that paper application, and come back. “Here’s an app, here’s an app,” I’d say. And we’re making paychecks $1,000 here, $1,000 there. Just enough to tide us over. We weren’t making great money, but then after year three, Nathan took me as his plus-one on the USHA Council of Excellence trip to Cabo in Mexico.”

“That was life-changing,” says Landis. “I saw these people with these bonus checks were $900,000, one million dollars. And I’m looking at my leader, Derrick Berry, and Jim Schmitt who were at my table, and I’m in awe again.  I was like a baby in the room, just absorbing all this information. I wanted to touch these people. I wanted to be around these types of people. And that’s exactly what we did. I migrated to a different type of mindset and I was all in, failure was not an option anymore. We were going to go ahead and grow.”

 

Now it’s Landis who works as an FTA and helps train new agents, as well as personally produce, while Rachel helps build The Health Insurance Duo’s reputation online and in person.

 

“My day looks a little bit different than Landis’s,” says Rachel. “I do a lot of networking. I’m heavily involved in my chamber and that’s where we get a lot of business. We get a lot of referrals. I’ve built a lot of trust and built a lot of relationships with people. I probably go to, depending on the week, 5-to-10 meetings a week.” Rachel is so good at spreading the message and serving others she was recently awarded Volunteer of the Year by the Northeast Tarrant Chamber of Commerce.

It’s a lot of work for the Health Insurance Duo, but by doing it together the couple has now built a robust business, battling back against the adversity and finding a way to keep moving forward.

“Everyone is going to face adversity,” says Landis. “It doesn’t matter what path of life we are on or the experiences in our past. Who we are, is who we are. Never let anyone else dictate how successful you’re going to be. People can help or they can hurt. One thing is for sure no one is going to dictate how successful I am in this company but for me. Because you have to hold yourself up to a certain standard. Either you’re going to make it, fake it until you make it, or you’re just not going to make it at all. I’m one of the people who’s not going to fake anything because I am going to make it.”

Landis has made it, from almost seemingly insurmountable odds to the doors of USHEALTH Advisors. He has fought for and gained the one thing he always desired the most, the one thing he’ll never take for granted… freedom.

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky

Make USHEALTH Advisors your next career! Click and apply: (https://www.ushacareers.com/apply/)

_____________________________________________________________

Become part of The Billion. You can read and learn more about Mark Brodinsky at (http://markbrodinsky.life/)

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Winning, it’s not just in some of us, it’s in all of us. But we forget that, we get down, distracted and believe less. Yet if we focus on just a little bit of progress, getting 1% better every day, the compound effect creates a legacy.

You were born to be legendary. So was your business. The best business serves a need of others and the process of building it, shaping it, and making it a beacon of light and hope takes hard work, responsibility, and dedication. Creating that world-class business becomes a big part of your story.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: A Bag of Chips

 

“Even in the beginning, it made me realize what I’m capable of. And that’s what it does to anybody who comes to USHEALTH Advisors. It shows what you’re truly capable of, your true potential. If you have the right mindset, the winning mindset, the work ethic, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.” – Bryan Velasquez

You can’t always get what you want… until you want it bad enough. Bryan Velasquez says that once you find what you want, it’s simple, not easy but simple: “Stay true to yourself, never forget your purpose, and show up every day.”

Bryan has always been true to himself, and he knows how to work and to show up every day, even if for a decade it was for a myriad of what he describes as, “dead-end jobs.” But it wasn’t until that day in the hospital that he discovered his purpose, or perhaps what would lead him to his purpose.

Bryan wasn’t at the hospital because he was sick that day, but what happened at that moment made him sick to his stomach.

“I was with my son, my oldest son Oliver,” says Bryan, “he was about five at the time. We were at the hospital because there were some tests he had to get done. And while standing in the lobby, he asked me to buy him a bag of chips. At that moment, I was so poor, I had nothing, no money. I couldn’t do that for him. I’ll never forget that day, having to say no, that I couldn’t even buy that bag of chips.”

There are moments that take our breath away – and then there are moments when we realize we’re going to need to breathe – and take the next step to improve our situation. For Bryan, that day was the latter. Life was going to have to change. He had his children and he knew he had to do better for them.

At the time Bryan found USHEALTH Advisors he was 28-years-old and unemployed. More recently he had spent three years working, but even Bryan knew it was simply to try and make ends meet, and he couldn’t do a very good job of it because the job couldn’t give him what he and his family needed.

“I worked on a food truck, a food trailer, flipping burgers,” says Bryan. “This is a true story. I always tell it in my recruiting interviews. Before USHEALTH, I was working in a food truck in South Florida, in the heat, flipping burgers, making egg sandwiches, and washing dishes at night. I also remember scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees for $10 an hour. And I did that for three years before USHA! That’s hard to believe. That was my last job.”

That was 2016, and now six years later, no longer cooking and scrubbing, Bryan knows he’s still working hard, but now he’s making a difference. He’s helping and serving in a much different manner than working on the food truck. Now he can feed his family, and feed his soul, in a big way.

Since coming to USHEALTH Advisors, Bryan has helped enough clients to produce nearly $6 million in personal business and as a Field Training Agent and now a Field Sales Leader, has led his teams to the tune of more than $35 million in production. It’s a story of great success, of coming from nothing but never retreating, of still putting one foot in front of the other, until those steps led him to the opportunity of a lifetime.

“I had my back against the wall before I came here to USHA,” says Bryan. “My parents are immigrants, first-generation from Honduras, coming to America in the ’80s. I’m one of four kids, I have three siblings, an older and younger brother, and an older sister, so I was stuck in the middle. Because my parents came from a third-world country, things were much different over there. But my parents gave us a roof over our heads, which was obviously amazing since I know of people who have much less.”

“I learned a lot from them, how to just kind of figure it out. My dad worked at a retirement home and so he was there all day. And I’ll never forget, this was in the ’80s, he would ride his bike to work. He would ride 10 miles to work, every morning and night, before he had a car. My mom cleaned houses. So that’s another thing too that I was able to pick up from both of them was hard work. My parents finally did a little better and they were able to get out of that situation, we got out of the apartment, then got a duplex, and then a real house.”

Everything worthwhile takes hard work and while Bryan watched his parents do just that, he also says he learned how to be competitive from his brother. “I had an older brother who was two years older than me and he used to kick my ass,” laughs Bryan. “Growing up we were all competitive. I had my brothers so I love competing. Growing up in South Florida in the ’90s, you know, we did pretty much everything outside, sports, played basketball, soccer, football, and wrestling.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“To lead is to inspire others by the way that you live. To lead is to walk through the fires of your hardest times to step up into forgiveness. To lead is to remove any form of mediocrity from infiltrating the quarters of your life in a dazzling celebration of the majesty that is your birthright. To lead is to turn your terrors into triumphs and translate each of your heartbreaks into heroism. And more than all else, to lead is to be a force for good on this tiny planet of ours.” – Robin Sharma, The 5am Club

This could and should be your story.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Prove Them Wrong

There is no doubt Lindsey Limerick knows how to take a deep dive and make a big splash.

A competitive swimmer from the time she was very young, Lindsey eventually became a national swim champion representing her high school in Chatanooga, Tennessee.

“One of my greatest accomplishments in life is winning that championship,” says Lindsey. “My childhood consisted of a lot of swimming and swim practice. I swam for like 16 years with my brother, and we swam a lot. My parents started me out when I was young. They wanted me to try a bunch of sports and then they narrowed it down to one – because it was the thing I was best at I guess, swimming. The year I won the championship the swim team was the highest placing team in the nation.”

Any competitive sport, whether it’s swimming or the like, takes a tremendous amount of dedication and discipline, tools and traits that you develop when you’re young and serve you later in life – even though at the moment, it might be hard to see the path where it will lead. For Lindsey, the rigors of the pool life have led to a work ethic like no other.

“There was a lot of discipline in my life,” says Lindsey. “My parents were very strict at home and then growing up and always on a team, whatever swim team I was on at the time was always one of the higher-ranked ones. Those coaches are usually a little sterner and maybe a little meaner to a point, and I definitely learned a bunch of discipline from those days. I would say even the team sport aspect, I learned a lot of how to work with others and all have one single goal. But also on the individual side, I learned how to just look at a goal and try to hit that and the repetition of having to do something every single day toward that goal.”

Work. Discipline. Dedication. Those concepts Lindsey internalized have led her to great success where she now resides, which is as a Field Sales Leader with USHEALTH Advisors. And Lindsey’s on a roll, leading her team to more than $21 million in team production and having issued more than $2.8 million in personal business, all in a little more than four years, and all in the face of some adversity, for there were those who believed she couldn’t do it.

“Sometimes God puts critics in our lives to keep you stirred up. He’ll allow critics, discouragers, even some haters in – so when you feel tired, think you wanna give up, you’ll keep pressing forward, shaking it off, not because you feel like it, but because you don’t want to give your critics the joy of seeing you defeated.” – Joel Osteen

“It’s been a pretty exciting ride because plenty of people didn’t know if I would be really good at this, including my family,” laughs Lindsey. “It’s funny to talk now to friends like Carson Rodgers (now a successful Division Leader) and another agent, Josiah Harwell, (now a Field Sales Leader). They didn’t really think I’d be good at this. They actually contracted me, but they did it in a different office because they were worried it would be awkward if I failed, essentially. I think I proved a lot of people wrong in the beginning. People started calling me the Carson Rogers of that division, which was fun. I started out pretty fast and I’ve improved year to year. It’s just been a lot of fun proving everybody wrong, family and friends included!”

 

There may have been doubters in Lindsey’s life because of her former track record just before coming to USHA. Her wonderful water success aside, she had recently come out of a position where she was working a lot, but not focused on just one thing… kind of just treading water you might say.

During her senior year in college and then for about a year or so after, Lindsey worked at a local TV station in Knoxville, Tennessee. But not “feeling it” in the TV business and wanting a change of pace and feeling like, in her words, “the grandma in that college town,” Lindsey decided to make a move.

“I didn’t know what to do,” says Lindsey. “But I knew that I needed to make a change and so I packed up my stuff up and moved to Nashville, but there was nothing here. I had no jobs. I applied to a bunch. In my first year, I kind of struggled to be honest. I had four jobs. I was a dog walker, a nail salon receptionist, a swim coach, and a financial advisor.”

“I took the Series 6, 7, 63, and 65 and was trying to do that. It just didn’t work out. I was pretty poor for a year or so, even struggled to buy food at Taco Bell and it got to the point where I could not afford rent one December. I had met somebody who worked at USHA and I asked for them to give me a shot. It was supposed to be just trying it out because I’d already had the certifications in the other job and then ended up just loving this and telling financial advising that it could go by the wayside.”

“All things must change to something new, to something strange. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“I just knew I could make this happen. I mean, this opportunity is something I think where you get a formula by watching other people doing it. So to me, I thought if somebody else can do this, there’s no reason I can’t. I worked a lot. I mean I was there all the time, wanting to learn quickly, I was super poor. I needed a lot of money, I had to pay my rent in two weeks.”

“So I just found the person at my office who did the best, who wrote the most business, and I just copied him. I beat him to the office every morning. I stayed every night and left only when he left. I just copied him until I finally figured it out myself and could create my own schedule. But really, I mean, I was annoying. I just would go find the person who was doing the best that week and I would sit next to them and I’d be like, “what are you doing, can I follow you for the day? I didn’t really have the option to not succeed. I kind of put all my eggs in one basket. There was no option but to succeed.”

“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

It was from the lessons Lindsey had learned earlier in life – if you jump in with both feet, focus on one thing and swim like hell – good things can happen. That’s how champions are made.

“Joining USHEALTH Advisors was an exciting and scary time for me,” says Lindsey. “Back at the news station, the last time I had a steady job and a steady paycheck, I think I made like $900 every two weeks. At the time I thought that was good. So starting here, I took the job just because I literally could not afford to pay rent that month and I was just hoping to make it. The second week after I issued my first new business, I made $4,000. That’s what really hooked me with this company… I mean, you’re telling me if I work really hard, I can get paid for that, rather than just hourly? I was all in.”

 

All in means living the life and the USHA culture focusing on HOPE – Helping Other People Everyday – and hard work. Hard work in service to others. And doing it all with what Lindsey says is her secret sauce… a positive mindset.

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar

“If people said, I like Lindsey Limerick, they would probably say because of my positivity, I would guess,” she says. “It can be kind of annoying sometimes, but I think it’s definitely one of the reasons that my team has taken off. We’re really big into the culture. I am. Just having an environment that is a positive one and one that you want to be around because this job isn’t going to work if you’re angry. I am the annoying positive poly who tries to find the bright side. I would say with this career, that’s also really helpful because there are a lot of ups and downs. It’s a lot harder at this job to be angry and still work it. So for me, annoyingly, I know it’s a weird answer, but I would probably say positivity, just having a positive outlook, being optimistic.”

Looking at the bright side of things is a big driver since attitude steers the bus, but it’s the work you put in that gives it gas… and as Lindsey has learned your tank best be full if you want to make it to your destination. Here, there are no secrets, hard work works.

“Whew, there’s plenty of work to do,” says Lindsey. “It is even more time-consuming now as a Field Sales Leader. I am incredibly passionate and involved with my team. My goal is just to get my team to see this opportunity and experience it like I have because it’s just been the most incredible career ever. I run a lot of contests for my team to incentivize them. We do a lot of dial sessions where we’ll be at the office starting at 6 AM (CST). Tonight, for example, we’re having a dial session and everybody’s staying until 8 PM. I usually work until about 10 or 11 every night, not always necessarily at the office, but doing work that needs to be done. I’ve learned so much from mentors like my Division Leader Carson and my Satellite, Kyle Weller. We hang out and discuss work all the time. I would say a lot of my success is from learning from and bouncing ideas off of both of them.  We vibe very well and it makes sense that our downline of agents and leaders are all on the same page.”

“Monday through Friday I come into the office. I come in on some Saturdays. I don’t do as much on Saturdays, except if I’m holding a meeting or helping agents with calls. But Sunday, I actually stay home, and that’s one of my big days for my business where I send out texts and try to make appointments for the week. Just because being an FSL for me has certainly limited the amount of time that I have personally, to write personal business. So I try to get that where I can. Sunday is definitely one of those days.”

The Sunday business routine is something Lindsey picked up from Carson. For years, this was Carson’s go-to day to reach out to people and do applications. Lindsey has learned a lot more from Carson… and the two became close, close enough that Lindsey’s dream with USHA has now led to a new team… just about a month ago, Carson asked Lindsey to marry him.

“It was really cute,” says Lindsey. “Carson had a divisional 2021 end of the year awards party and gave an award to everyone who made their bonus, the top writers and whoever hit a million in production for the year and things like that. Then the last award was the team unity award. I didn’t know what that was about. I was like, “Why am I receiving this?” I got called on stage and he proposed to me in front of everyone, which was really cool.”

 

The two are now making wedding plans and continuing to live life together and with their dog, Baker, the six-year-old Jack Russell Terrier with whom Lindsey says she’s obsessed. “Baker’s been with me since the reporting job in my senior year in college,” she says. He was the only one that slept the same hours I slept during my overnight shift at the TV station.”

 

And what of that TV career? Lindsey went to college and graduated with a major in journalism and electronic media and thought her dream would be in the TV business… but after giving it a shot, Lindsey learned that it’s ok to switch gears, to make a shift, and to think outside the box.

“But dreams change. Fate has a way, showing you paths you want more.” – Abbi Glines

“It’s ok to drop the dream, so to speak,” says Lindsey. “I just didn’t love the dream I thought I had. The challenge was finding something that I really loved to do. Oddly, sales is not something that everybody talks about. So just the fact that I somehow found this and stuck with it, got good at it, and have made it to the point where I’m today. I would almost say is also my greatest accomplishment because I overcame all of that. It’s crazy to think where I would be if I had just stayed stagnant and not explored and tried to find something that would ignite the fire that I was looking for.”

Not only that, but when so many doubted she could do this, Lindsey felt that fire, took the deep dive, held nothing back, and proved them wrong.

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky

Make USHEALTH Advisors your next career! Click and apply: (https://www.ushacareers.com/apply/)

_____________________________________________________________

Become part of The Billion. You can read and learn more about Mark Brodinsky at (http://markbrodinsky.life/)

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There is no other way. You can’t go around it, above it, or below it… you have to go through it.

“It” is the obstacle.

As an entrepreneur, you face a never-ending parade of “its” every day. That’s really what business is –  challenge after challenge after challenge, always with the end in mind, getting through “it” to the other side.

The more you overcome, the stronger you get, the space slowly opens to reveal the business you’ve built.

And “it” makes for a great story.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Empower Others

“Telling the truth is the slow, mundane, difficult route to a meaningful life. Anything else is cheating. “
– Donald Miller

The truth is out there. And Luke Jeraci knows it.

“I’m obsessed with the truth,” says Luke. “My big thing is truth – if you follow that path I think God has your back. Everybody wants to be right, I want to find out what’s right.  The truth should be what it is, even if it doesn’t benefit me.”

Sometimes to get to the truth, you’ve got to do the hard things. Hard, like sleeping on the floor of your office… for more than a month. If you want it bad enough you find a way. Luke found his way, building from the ground up.

The Jeraci Division of USHEALTH Advisors near Atlanta, Georgia, began with Luke making the office his home, literally. “It is one of the greatest challenges I have faced in life,” says Luke.

“Starting an office from scratch, while I was still a Field Training Agent. Going from sleeping in the office and on friend’s couches to the team doing a million dollars in production in a single week. As an FTA I was doing it all, figuring out the bills, funding, recruiting, training, outfitting the office. I slept on the floor, showered in the office building, just living out of there while I was building it.”

Why do it? Why go through it all? Luke says he felt it was time to grow and it was the only real way for growth in his situation, he felt ready for it. “Sometimes you just know,” he says.

Luke made the move from Ft Lauderdale, Florida to Lawrenceville, Georgia, (near Atlanta), after talking to his friend Brian Okin and encouraging Brian to join USHA in Ft Lauderdale. “Brian asked me if I would consider opening an office in the Atlanta area. I told Brian if you get three friends to do this, I will.”

Brian did.

“We started in November of 2019 with Brian Okin and a few other agents. But I had nowhere to live when I came here. I couch-surfed for a time and was living with Brian, but then Covid hit. Brian has two kids, and I didn’t want to take any chances, so I moved myself into the office.

“I would sleep on the floor, wake up and scream f*** in the morning, then laugh and jump in the cold ass shower in the building. I told myself this is going to be such a cool story to tell. I know I’m gonna make it work, I know it, this will be so cool. To remind me of what it took, once a month I still sleep on the floor.”

This knowing has driven the “Jeraci Park” Division to generate more than $30 million in team production. That’s helping and serving a lot of people, in a relatively short period of time. Luke joined USHEALTH Advisors in June of 2016, after being recruited by Garrett Laughlin.

“I was working in Ft Lauderdale as a bartender and knew Garrett from the bar,” says Luke. “I saw on social media, when Garrett posted the USHA Phoenix magazine, with himself on the cover, so I called him and asked if he made a million – he said more – and so I asked if I could join.”

Luke says it was a hustle in the beginning, but he’s no stranger to hard work. At the time he contracted with USHEALTH Advisors, Luke was tending bar, acting, and helping to run a moving company. Hustle might be Luke’s middle name.

“My buddy, Chris Storrie, who just contracted with USHA, and I had started this moving company, with nothing, not even trucks,” says Luke. “We’d print about 600 flyers at Staples, go around town and introduce ourselves, hand out the flyers, then when someone called we’d book the estimate, get an upfront $100 deposit, go rent a U-Haul and do the gig. I actually helped moved Garrett’s sister and brother. When I started, Garrett had me come in, I changed in the bathroom and started making calls.”

For Luke, the transition seemed like the next step in his journey. Helping (as a mover) and serving (as a bartender) is not foreign to Luke, neither is the concept of reinventing himself – Luke had already worked as an actor as well. The good ones know how to transform themselves into someone else and make it real.

“I grew up in Syracuse, New York, but in 2013, my intuition told me to move to Florida,” says Luke.” I didn’t know anybody at the time, but I found my way into acting. I had just read The Secret and was inspired. I saw an ad about casting for a Cadillac commercial and I applied. While there I overheard some people talking about an audition for the next day. You had to have applied to try out, but I went there anyway and convinced them they had lost my resume. Fortunately, it was an improv audition for a role in a small film called, Alone. I won the part, but the film never got made. The guy running it was also pushing kilos of cocaine, or something,” laughs Luke.

“I got a few more gigs and got paid for them. I ended up taking acting classes. It’s cool, acting teaches you how to be authentic when a situation isn’t real. You act as you feel in the moment. It fine-tuned my intuition, it helped me, like in a quote I read from Todd Durkin, ‘to be true in a fake situation.'”

The truth is out there.

Luke says he’s lived his own truth in more ways than one, coming from a strong foundation. Luke says his childhood was “great”, growing up with one sister and “awesome parents”. He played high school football and made friendships, many of which he still maintains to this day, including friends who he persuaded to work with him at USHEALTH Advisors. At the still-young age of 35, Luke says he has learned a lot and he has taught much as well.

A little more than a decade ago Luke worked as a high school history teacher, as well as mentoring, tutoring, and teaching high school football. But he says education in Syracuse was tough.

“I had phenomenal results,” says Luke. “But I wasn’t fulfilled. A lot of Syracuse at the time was known as an at-risk area, in fact, the school next to my house had a 33-percent graduation rate. Most of the high schools in the area had less than a 50% graduation rate. I wanted to save the world, but couldn’t do it there. You have to save the world by empowering yourself and others.”

In order to save the world, sometimes you need to see more of it and view how others make their way along this journey of life. Luke got lucky and met Scott Ball while the two were in college. Scott enjoyed doing charity work and had several connections. Scott and Luke ended up in a program where they spent a year in Porto Novo in Benin, in West Africa. They brought books and supplies to help out in the schools and assist the teachers. “They had very few resources,” says Luke, “The teachers have to have everything memorized because of the lack of books. And kids used mini chalkboards to write. It was super wild and cool to assist them.”

While on spring break from graduate school, Luke and Scott also went to Florence, Alabama to participate with many others in Habitat for Humanity, helping to build a house for a single mom who had lost hers after a series of tornadoes tore the town apart.

Luke also took part in a mentorship program in Syracuse for at-risk youth who had only one parent or no parents, called Hillside. And once he moved to Florida, he volunteered to donate 10% of his paycheck to a program called, HANDY. Most recently, in Atlanta, Luke opened his heart again to assist in Hope Through Soap, helping homeless people. The program rents trailers and parks them where groups of homeless are living, offering up showers, haircuts, clothing, and a new backpack for the less fortunate.

It’s a spirit of giving, of helping, and of serving that works so well with Luke’s career at USHEALTH Advisors, where the focus is to be Powered by Purpose and anchored in HOPE. After all, givers gain and it’s what you do for yourself, to build your mind, your character, and your heart – and then share those gifts to build others up – which makes for a rewarding career and a fulfilling life.

“I have a miracle morning,” says Luke. “I wake up about 5 am and go into silence, prayer, meditation, affirmations, reading, visualizations, exercise, and write down gratitude and my plans for the day. I tell people I have three life hacks, it’s wake up early, read and write life goals.”

“I try to read 48 to 60 books a year and do book clubs with agents and leaders. I read a lot in the morning and before I go to sleep. I always take time out of my day to read. When I’m on point, it’s about 90 minutes a day. I often go back to reading a spiritual book, called The Kybalion, from ancient Egypt, a guide to the nature of life, the all, god’s meditation.”

“I truly believe that if you grow yourself the business will follow. If you focus only on the business, burnout happens. I keep a bookshelf in the office with books the agents and leaders can sign out. I ask everyone to take time away from work and exercise and then meditate. I do less work by getting better. I don’t manage people I help make them better. We call it growing mentally, physically, and spiritually.”

Luke says he believes in Dojo, a Japanese term that literally means place of the way. “It’s the Dojo where you go to get better and help others to do the same. My training is on my goal setting and little wins to build the mental reserve. If you have stuff going on, it’s where you come to learn the ways to handle it all. I believe life is like a pendulum. It swings constantly between easy and hard, between good and bad. If you develop and maintain the right habits and work in the right environment, you can switch it back from bad to good, or from hard to easy.”

Luke structures his days as well, taking that pendulum from one activity to another, all with the focus of facing the obstacles and then swinging back to the solution. “I’m a problem solver or a solutions finder,” he says. “I love the quote from Think and Grow Rich, every adversity has an equal and opposite opportunity. I tell agents and friends that all the time… there’s always an opposite and equal benefit from the adversity you face.”

Luke’s days are spent helping with the leads, doing appointments with agents, and training. The team does Monday book reviews, Tuesday goal settings, Wednesday workshops, Thursday life hacks. And Luke likes to take walks mid-day, he used to go on walks with others, but now he walks by himself. “Each level you go up in any company, more people need your attention. So now I walk alone, about 45 minutes to an hour each day. Sometimes I walk twice, two-a-days… mainly cause I’ve gained weight,” he laughs.

Luke also tries to meet one-to-one with his agents. “In an homage to my mom, who loved the book, Tuesdays with Morrie, I used to call it Fridays with Luke, with everybody telling me their life story, or what is going on with them. But the more we grow, I can’t get it all done on a Friday, so it’s more than Fridays now. It’s very unconventional the way we do things here. We dial less, but are more engaged per dial.”

“I tell my agents, to first and foremost be yourself and be authentic, don’t say anything that’s not true, ever. People in my opinion have a natural bullshit detector. Connect with the person, that’s the first thing you do. Get on the phone and have fun. Don’t worry about insurance, find out about them first, find out why they are looking, ask questions. I have my agents rewrite whatever I teach them in their own words. Everyone’s pitch is completely different. I understand the reasoning behind trying to sell the “normal way”, but when someone calls and tries to sell me sh*t, I hang up on them. But if they call to talk to me, then I will talk with them.”

It’s this focus on self-worth, on growth, on getting better that attracted Luke’s soon-to-be better half, Danielle Graves. The couple will be married on May 8th. Apparently, there’s another benefit to being a voracious reader. 😉

“I met Danielle when I first started working at Garrett’s office in 2016,” says Luke. “She walked up to me while I was reading a sales book, and she says, ‘people here don’t read.’ She was trying to do sales, but now she’s a mental health counselor. And so now I also have her come in and work with the agents!

Luke says he also very much appreciates all that has been done for him along his own journey up to this point. “I know I wouldn’t be where I am without my family and inner circle,” he says.

The support Luke has received and the work he has done for himself has created a foundation that helps to keep Luke grounded. And it’s obvious the mental mindset needed to be successful in business is what fascinates and inspires him, as well as the challenges of leadership and the goal to make others better.

“My big thing, what I want to be known for, is empowering others,” says Luke. It’s my motivation for everything.”

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky

USHA-SM-13-0222