It’s real, it’s now and it’s abundant. If you can lock in on those three concepts, you can create almost anything. If you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hands.

The birth of a business includes all of those pieces… think of the idea, visualize what it could be, in all its grandeur, then put those thoughts into action.

Do the thing and you will have the power.

The doing of the thing is the secret, then embracing the challenges and obstacles – the eventual mastery of skills brings self-confidence.

The story of a business hero is born from such work.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Powered by Purpose

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”  – Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

It actually all began with Natalie Giannascoli’s initial introduction to USHEALTH Advisors. For Natalie, her first reaction was fear – false evidence appearing real.

For several years prior, Natalie had been working as a bartender, most recently at a beach bar in Clearwater, Florida. But even then, in her early 20’s, she had a realization. “I had an epiphany one day,” says Natalie. “I thought what am I going to do when I’m 40? I know there are careers for bartending, but I don’t want to deal with people drinking too much and other issues the rest of my working career. So I started looking for something else and found a job advertisement for this company called USHEALTH Advisors.”

“I wasn’t nervous to attend any interview, but when I got to this one I was SO nervous. There were so many people there in the room, I thought, what am I doing? I remember texting my husband John, saying, ‘it’s a group presentation, what do I do?’ “He said, ‘just sit there and go through it, they let you know quicker in a group setting if they want you or not.'”

Then Natalie started doing the thing so many of us do, she told herself a story in her mind, she made an assumption and nearly made a beeline for the door. 

“I looked around and saw people older than me, ” says Natalie, “even people looking professional holding briefcases. I knew there was no way I was getting this job. I told myself, all these other people are more qualified for this. I don’t know why I’m here, I know nothing about insurance. I don’t know what I’m doing here!”

“But then I started listening to the presentation, taking notes and thought, damn this is really interesting. I get the whole picture. The income potential did it for me at first, but then I saw the pictures of happy people in offices and going on rewards trips and having a good time. I wasn’t happy with what I was doing, and I’m also very competitive. That fired me up. Then I saw people out in the office where I was interviewing, not just sitting in cubes, but sitting and working together. There was music playing, it was weird, nothing like I was used to when I worked in an office. And there was the whole self-employed part of this – I like that – I don’t want my work ethic to be compared to someone else. I want to show up for me.”

But Natalie says what really made her want to be with the USHA opportunity was the one thing that happened right before her one-to-one interview because it made her smile. Natalie loves to laugh and have a good time. “The guy who came out to call me in for my interview tripped as he walked out of the door, and then someone gave him grief about it” laughs Natalie. I said to myself, ‘this is good, these are my people, I’m in the right place.’ “I like it light-hearted I like seeing people happy because I like to have fun. I thought I can really do this, this is super cool, I want to be here.”

Natalie says she contracted with USHA and did the online licensing study course in four days. “I did not want to do the study course, because I’m not a good test person. So I buckled down and got the study course completed as quickly as I could, just to get it over with. I took the test two days later and passed.”

But then as she started off in her new career with USHA, Natalie did the one thing that nearly made her want to pass on the opportunity, the one thing that for most people is a recipe for failure.

“I tried to reinvent the wheel,” says Natalie. “I joined USHEALTH Advisors on January 7th, 2017 and I didn’t write my first insurance application until March 28th. I just thought there were certain things I could do better than how I had been trained to contact potential insurance clients. I tried to rewrite my scripts to have different things to say, but it was all really because I was scared. I was scared for people to listen to me. I thought they would say, you sound like an idiot, why would you say that? I had been a great bartender and could talk to people, but that was face to face. I could talk to anyone about anything in person, but over the phone, it was harder for me because they couldn’t see me and I had a tough time being animated. I didn’t want to sound like I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Natalie freely admits now it was a recipe for failure, but failure doesn’t mean defeat. Failure means a learning curve, a lesson, an opportunity to create success from your mistakes, for what else is a failure, but success deferred. After all, for years Natalie faced failure every day – as a dedicated softball player. A sport that is steeped in failure. 

“It definitely helps to play a sport when you’re growing up,” says Natalie. “In softball, I played first base, a position where I had to pay attention. I was in almost every play, every situation, yelling to the outfielders how many outs there were, watching the pitcher, the runners, all of it. It’s a lot like this career at USHA, agents throw curveballs at you all the time and you are in everything, every “play” that’s going on.”

In her time at USHEALTH Advisors, Natalie has proved she’s got game. With the help of her leaders and fellow agents, Natalie got past her fear of dialing and has been leading by example. She recently passed her four-year anniversary with USHA, having issued more than $2.5-million in individual insurance policies and now as a Field Sales Leader, has helped her teams to produce more than $22 million in sales!

 

That’s a lot of phone calls, a lot of long days and nights and for Natalie, a lot of fun. “I like having a fun environment with whatever I do,” she says. “I like to tell jokes, to fool around, whether it’s with my family or my agents. Life doesn’t have to be all serious. if you’re too serious, especially with this career, you won’t make it. You deal with a lot of rejection throughout the day. Without some jokes, or something light-hearted, you won’t feel happiness or joy in your day, at least not for me.”

Natalie knows that experiencing true joy is important because to feel the joy you undoubtedly must have experienced some pain. For Natalie, that pain drives her purpose – because her purpose for selling health insurance comes from the pain of loss and knowing how important health coverage can be.

“I grew up in New Jersey with two younger sisters and three older brothers,” says Natalie. “My oldest brother, Christopher, he’s my purpose. He had medical concerns and passed away. I run my purpose because I know what it was like to deal with all of that. My brother had cerebral palsy and lived with a lot of medical concerns. Unfortunately, he couldn’t handle all the surgeries and medications – he was only 22 when he died. Health coverage was important for my parents to help find the right doctors to get my brother the care he needed. And now it serves as a story that I can relate to others, especially when I speak with someone who is young, or healthy and tells you they don’t need health insurance. It serves my purpose and theirs when I can share a real-life story – it can be so helpful for people who need to see that side of their own story.”

The story of Christopher’s passing stays with Natalie, though she says she has learned to be able to get past it and can now, as she said, relate it to others.

“I was in high school when he passed,” she says. “It’s a weird feeling. It’s not like when you lose an older family member, like your grandparent, which you usually experience first and are prepared for, or even if somebody gets sick and you know it’s coming. This was kind of out of the blue… it was all of a sudden. It’s different. It’s like somebody cut you in half and then tells you, ‘ok, now you’ll have to figure out this life with just two limbs. It was a very empty feeling, but my family and I got over it together. Being together made it better, made it a bit easier.”

Having realized so much about the value of life at a young age, (Natalie was only 17 when her brother passed on, she’s now 26), she’s focused on getting as much life as possible out of each and every single day, including her work with USHEALTH Advisors.

“My day begins early, my alarm is set for 4:45 am,” says Natalie. “It goes off and then I lie there for 15 minutes just thinking – about what I can’t even tell you sometimes. But it serves me. If I’m not on top of my morning, then my whole day is shot and I want to start over. I love my 15-minutes-of-me. I might think about what I have to do for the day, or about yesterday, or what I’m looking forward to that day. At 5 am I put my feet on the ground. I don’t like to feel rushed which is why I start early. I remember reading a few things from Warren Buffet, who talked about getting up earlier, leaving earlier, so you’re not interrupted and you avoid the little things during the day that might aggravate you. It’s hard to get up early, but it’s beneficial for sure.”

“I get to the office between 6:45 and 7 am, about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes before the agents and I start on the phones, and I always have something to do, whether it’s an e-mail to read or to send, or work on an underwriting appeal for an agent, or anything else. I have that hour-plus to deal with it. It’s the most crucial part of my day.”

“I then dial with the agents from 8 am to 10 am. In the morning I have fewer interruptions than I have the rest of the day because once the afternoon hits my day starts picking up speed because we do our training in the afternoon as well. That’s why I get my organization stuff done in the morning. The evening time is when you get most of your potential clients on the phone. I sit with the agents so I can hear them.  I normally don’t leave the office until between 8 pm and 9 pm.”

“My agents work long hours too. When they see me do it, they do it. I tell them, in the beginning, you have to be tied to the phones, talking to somebody, or prospecting. If you leave the office to go to lunch, then go to the same restaurant every day – and over time sell everyone there – then when you have sold everyone you can – find a new restaurant. Keep it all going.”

To keep it all going for herself, Natalie also leans on her husband John. Natalie and John met at a trivia night at a bar the two used to frequent in Pennsylvania, where Natalie went to college. They married a little less than two years ago and now John is Natalie’s stay-at-home husband.

“John is not an agent, but he quit his job to help me out,” says Natalie. “He helps with some networking at the local chamber of commerce and even more importantly he does everything for me at home, like taking care of two dogs and a cat, they are enough work as it is! He does the laundry, cooks, and all the tedious stuff no one wants to do, so I can spend more time at the office.”

For Natalie, it’s all about putting in the time. She believes the more she works and grows, the more she can give.

“If somebody were to say to me give me three things I like about Natalie, I hope it would be that she made me laugh, she helped me out and she bettered my business. She cared about what I was doing as a person, personally and professionally. I want to be somebody people want to follow on both sides – be a role model outside and within the office. I want to know that I’m making enough of an impact, that I am someone they want to follow and then do the same for other people.”

“I want to make them feel like they have a purpose. I know I do.”

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 learn more about Mark Brodinsky and his #onebillion mission at, (http://markbrodinsky.life/)              

USHA-SM-22-0221

Everything in life that’s worthwhile is an uphill battle.

This is certainly true in your work. No one starts off knowing all the answers. It’s trial and error, learning new skill sets and tons of practice. Building a successful business is the culmination of all that effort, time, vision and learning from the best.

The road to a rewarding career is paved with the steps of those who have fallen and found a way to get back up. Fortitude makes for a great story so others can heed your sage advice and learn from your mistakes.

Sharing your story does wonders for other people.

Everyone has a story. I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Servant Leader

For those who have chosen USHEALTH Advisors as a career, many are here for a collective reason, they were looking for a second chance, a shot at doing something meaningful, a place to call home.

For Robert Campbell, it was all of the above and one more important reason, his why,  to bring his daughter home. “For more than a year, I waged a legal battle to gain primary custody of my daughter Isabella (Bella),” says Robert. “It was tough and at one point the judge looked at me and said, ‘You’re a general manager of a restaurant. You work 80 hours a week. You won’t even be around to take care of your daughter, your mom will end up doing it.’ “I told him, I’ll quit. He said, ‘you’ll quit?’ “I said yes, I want to see my daughter. I’m not here to only get to be with her every other weekend. I’ve lived that life with my other children, I’m not interested in that. I want her to be with me.”

So Robert stood by his word, fatherhood meant more to him than anything and he quit the restaurant business… “cold turkey’, as he states. Robert says it was a blessing in disguise because he was done with the corporate American lifestyle. He wanted and needed the freedom to live a life that allowed him to be with Bella.

That desire to be with his daughter soon brought Robert to the doorstep of USHA, the day freedom came calling.

“When I quit the restaurant business about five years ago I started writing down what I wanted my job and opportunity to look like,” says Robert. “Then I put my resume out there and companies started calling. Since I live in Houston, a lot of the companies were oil and gas, then there were offers from banks, project management companies, pharmaceutical sales, medical device sales, and then I came across an ad from USHA Division Sales Leader Mark Kahil.”   That ad would turn out to be the one that changed Robert’s life.

“Kahil’s recruiter called me,” says Robert. “I went in for the interview, sat through the pitch, then Mark and I talked and I was offered the opportunity to contract with USHEALTH Advisors. Just talking to Mark, I was able to check off everything I had written down: being part of something special, not having a salary but instead uncapped income, and the flexibility and freedom to be there for my 3-year-old daughter, Bella.” That was April 2016 and Robert says he’s never looked back. Fast forward to today and he is now a Satellite Division Sales Leader for USHEALTH Advisors, with more than $15 million in team production.

It’s a great time in Robert’s life, but as with anyone who has traveled the road to success, you can easily take a look back and remember the tough times you had to overcome, the obstacles, the setbacks, the days you wanted to give up. And those are just the days when you were doing the work… what about all the days before? Life is in and of itself a tapestry, woven from the very beginning.

Going back in time, Robert says while early childhood was good, his teen years were tumultuous at best… and they left their mark. “My parents got divorced when I was in the 8th or 9th grade,” says Robert. “My mom had to go back to work while raising four kids by herself and doing it all on the money she could make being a hairstylist. My dad moved away and worked in different towns, while we stayed in Houston to finish school.”

After taking a shot as a walk-on wide receiver for a college football team, a shot that unfortunately didn’t work out, Robert, now age 19, started working in the restaurant industry, a career he would toil in, working 80 to 85 hour weeks for the next 20 years, while his personal life entered a two-decade roller coaster ride.

The ride began with Robert working at Landry’s seafood restaurant in Houston, where he met his first wife.

“I got married at age 20,” says Robert. “We had a daughter, got divorced, ended up getting remarried a few years later and had a son. But then it ended again. The timing was not right and I was working all the time. The toughest part was after the second divorce since I only go to see my kids a few weekends a month. While business was thriving, Robert says he was “dying inside.”

Midway through this 20-year career, Robert turned to his parents for help. Robert says spending all his time managing these places where people came to eat, was literally eating him up inside.

“I got my parents together and let them know I was in a weird spot in my life,” says Robert. “I told them I’ve got the work promotions and the money and the bonuses, but I work all the time, I have no joy or peace in my life. My dad had recently turned his life around, stopped drinking and turned to the bible for help. My mom bought me a bible and put my name on it. I started reading the bible and between that, prayer and more involvement with the church, it wasn’t long before I started to feel joy again.”

“I stopped the things I had been doing which were destroying my life and knew I had to make changes. I soon understood life was not just about working and making money. It’s about changing lives. I don’t work for other leaders, I work for God. I’m not perfect in any way, we all make mistakes, but I’ve got my priorities straight.”

But just a few years after straightening out his life, Robert faced one of life’s greatest challenges, one that tested his faith and his will. “In 2008 I got married again, but after one year of happiness, my new wife was killed in a car accident. I couldn’t understand how this could happen. I had turned my life over to God, and now this? But I soon realized how it brought me even closer to Him, as I had to find the faith to go on. It took about a year, but by then I was a whole lot stronger to deal with anything coming my way. I knew I had to shake the depression to be the best I could be for my kids and the people who relied on me at the restaurant where I managed.”

A few years later Robert married again and that union gave birth to Bella. While the marriage didn’t last, it was the separation that led Robert to fight for custody and to keep Bella living with him most of the time… and eventually inspired him to find a better working situation, as well as financial and lifestyle freedom with USHEALTH Advisors.

It’s now close to a 5-year journey with USHA, and one that nearly began with an early exit because Robert’s biggest fan wasn’t on board with his decision to join the company.

His hero, his mom.

“My mom thought I was the biggest idiot in the world for doing this,” laughs Robert. “I was 40-years-old at the time and she said, ‘this is crazy. It’s a sales commission job. You could make 300 calls a day with no guaranteed income. This is stupid, I can’t believe you are doing this.’ “She was one of my biggest detractors,” says Robert. Yet for most of his life, Robert’s mom had been his biggest supporter, the person he looked up to. As luck would have it, and to help out with her granddaughter, Bella, Robert’s mom ended up moving in with him, just about the time Robert got rolling with USHA.

“By the time my mom moved in with me I was hitting my production milestones with the company,” says Robert. “I could show her the weekly money I was bringing home, some very nice paychecks. By four months in, my mom was one of my biggest fans. And by the fall of 2016, she said, ‘you are doing really well, this is awesome.’ “Pretty soon I got promoted to a Field Training Agent and inherited 15 to 20 people on my team. I brought my mom to some events where my leaders were in attendance and she got to meet and speak with them. She loved it. Every time I come home now she asks how my team is doing. Plus she comes in every weekend to clean and sanitize our new 4,000 square foot office. She thinks this is the best company ever!”

Robert continues, “My daughter Bella is into this as well. I usually try to get home by about 7 pm most nights to be there for her. Bella looks at my sales reports and asks if I sold a policy or recruited anyone today. If I say no, she tells me, ‘you better get that fixed before the end of the week!’ “And even at 9-years-old Bella understands the times I have to work longer hours. Back in the summer, I had to put in extra time before a regional trip I had won and wasn’t back home at my normal time in the evening. I told Bella I was sorry I couldn’t get back earlier, she said, ‘It’s ok dad, I see your vision. You said you want things for me like private school and I know you want to get promoted to a Division Leader. Just like your sign in the office says, success requires sacrifice. I get it.'”

“That girl is my why,” says Robert. All of my kids are, she just happens to spend the most time with me now. Just the way I wanted it.”

It seems these days Robert’s way and his why are in perfect harmony. And they are cemented in many different signs in his satellite division office, including Bella’s favorite banner that reads: REMEMBER YOUR WHY. PLAN AND EFFORT. SUCCESS REQUIRES SACRIFICE.

But Robert says he also knows when it comes to his new agents you can’t want it more for someone then they want it for themselves.

“In this business, we run across people who work really hard and are superstars,” says Robert. “Then there’s the other side of it. In my position now, or even as an agent, if I had certain goals I had them on a vision board at my desk and wanted to attack them all the time. Other people have their pictures up too but don’t work quite as long or as hard for them. That part is hard for me to understand. All we really want to do here is to find people committed to helping other people and then achieve their own goals every day.”

Robert says a day in his life to hit his own goals as a satellite division leader starts early. “I wake up about 5:30 and get a Google alert,” says Robert. “I then read about five to ten articles about health insurance from all across the country. I get ready, make Bella’s lunch and drive her to a school about 40 minutes away. Then I hit the office for a full day. But I plan my day and my week out in advance on Sunday. I know what I need to be doing every 15 minutes. The schedule helps me stay on track. It’s pretty much a 7-day-a week run on the weeks I don’t have Bella and 6-days-a-week when I do.”

Each schedule, each week is like another chapter in the book of his life and Robert says he’d like to write his own book one day.

“I have a couple of quotes or philosophies I live by,” says Robert. “One of them is one I share with my kids all the time which is, work all day, pray all night. The other one is a quote I’d like to make the title of my book, live once, die twice because in my faith we are going to live again beyond this world. But while I’m here my goal is to focus on the one thing I have come to believe in deeply these past few years, and that’s servant leadership. I know our CEO Troy McQuagge talks about what it means to be a servant leader. I fully believe that and more, I tell people, servant leadership is sexy!“

 

“It’s one thing I talk about all the time. I think that people need to know that and it’s something our world culture and business should focus on. It’s not about the bottom dollar or the numbers. You should be here to become the very best version of yourself, to make yourself whoever you want to be.”

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 learn more about Mark Brodinsky and his #onebillion mission at, (http://markbrodinsky.life/)  

USHA-SM-21-0221          

What makes life and business interesting is the inherent drama and failure, from both, comes growth.

If you picked up a book on the story of someone’s life and chapter one read, Everything’s Fine, chapter two read, Everything’s Fine and chapter three said more of the same, would you read the book? Of course not.

The same thing goes for business. If you opened the door to the store or started the entrepreneur journey and there was not a single twist or turn, or moment of drama, why would you continue?

The times when you fight the resistance, take on the challenge and battle to overcome, that’s what makes it all worth it. Turn nothing into something and now you’ve got a story. Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: The Other Side of Fear

“Things that have never happened before happen all the time.” – Scott Sagan, Stanford Professor

For Christopher Downham and his wife Brandi, it was a great time in their lives. They were simply enjoying being together. Recently wed and both in their mid-twenties, they were busy doing what twenty-somethings do – working, hanging with friends, eating out – basically enjoying a time with few responsibilities.

Then one day, responsibility came calling.

“My wife gets a phone call from the school where her cousin’s daughter, Brooklyn attended,” says Chris. “The kindergarten teacher was threatening to call social services because Brooklyn showed up in class without shoes. Brooklyn’s dad had been incarcerated and was serving 10-to-15 years and her mom was now in charge, but was involved in drugs, among other things.”

“My wife called to let me know what was going on. I was running a retail store at the time and when I hung up the phone my first thought was, we are going to be raising a child now. As a young couple, we had circumvented having children. Brandi was in college, I had started the business and while some of Brandi’s other girlfriends were having kids, we decided we were good for now. But when I walked in the door that night there was Brandi with a big glass of wine in her hand… and Brooklyn asleep on the sofa. She was only four.”

 “We didn’t really plan for this. We had such a different life, I mean we ate dinner out every night. I looked in the fridge and there were five beers, butter and a can of beans. That was the life we lived.”

Sometimes in life, a sudden situation, a moment in time, alters your whole life, forever changes the road ahead.

The current road had Chris running a sporting goods store in Edmond, Oklahoma. But a few years after Brooklyn entered their lives the store wasn’t doing that well and Chris was tired of working the hours with not a lot to show for it. “I woke up one day and said I can probably make more money working for someone else,” says Chris. “Another opportunity opened up to manage a store in Dallas, so we packed up Brooklyn, who was now six, and prepared to move to Dallas. But part of the complication on making the move was Brooklyn’s dad didn’t want to allow us to adopt her. Being that he was incarcerated he had free legal services and we only had so many resources to fight him. So we managed to get a temporary guardianship to take her to Dallas.”

Once they made the move Chris quickly figured out there were two big challenges, location and his paycheck. With limited ability to impact his own earnings the Downham family found it harder and harder to make ends meet.

“We had made the move and relocated to Dallas in pursuit of an income and a new start,” says Chris. “But six months into our new life in Dallas I realized the burning sensation of our new reality – we were flat broke and living in the most expensive zip code in North Texas. After expenses, I was lucky to have grocery money and often had to make 10-dollars stretch an entire week or longer. As the manager of 77 employees at the store, it was important that morale was high and we hit our numbers. Honestly, if it weren’t for the monthly bonus in my contract we would not have been able to eat, pay rent or survive as a young family.”

Chris says he was putting in just as much work as when he owned his store in Oklahoma. “I was searching, reaching and praying for a lifeline,” says Chris. “My marriage was under immense stress and every time I turned around a necessary utility was being shut off. And then out of nowhere, it happened. Brandi and I were going to have a baby!”

With the prospect of having another mouth to feed, Chris knew things has to change. What he couldn’t know was change was on the way.

Chris and Brandi had dinner with Chris’s stepmom, who worked as a Senior VP at a corporate benefits company and was in Dallas to help close a deal. She told Chris and Brandi about the sales agent she was working with who would earn six-figures off the deal they were closing and was earning a million dollars a year.

It was a turning point.

“I thought to myself, this guy is making a million dollars a year in the insurance business and I’m selling skis to Texans?” says Chris.” My mom didn’t realize it at the time, but she put the seed in my mind. I put it out there to see what was going on in the insurance business and the calls started coming.”

The timing of Chris’s decision was precarious. The ACA was being debated in Congress and even Chris’s own father, who worked as medical director at a big insurance company, and given the current climate was advising his son against getting into the business. “Most of my calls with different insurance companies went like this – they’d tell me all about their opportunity and when I asked about the ACA they basically said they hoped it would go away.”

No plan, no strategy, no hope. No hope that is… until HOPE came calling.

With their baby coming in just a few months, Chris got a call from USHEALTH Advisors. “Somebody saw my resume,” says Chris. “It was May of 2013 and I get a phone call and when I asked if this was health insurance the woman said, ‘yes’. “I said, ‘no thanks.’ “She said, ‘you answered that pretty quickly.’ “I told her I’d done my research and knew this is not the right field, I know the ACA is going to kill this opportunity. But she said you really should speak to my leadership team.”

Chris scheduled the interview and says he actually had a good feeling because USHA seemed different than the others.

“Several days later I met with Jim Shaunfield, who greeted me in boots and jeans,” says Chris. “I asked him what made USHEALTH Advisors different than everyone else. It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it.”

“I met my wife for lunch afterwards and she asked how it went. I told her I’d be self-employed again which she wasn’t thrilled to hear. But I said it’s not like we have overhead this time around. She said she’d need to think about it, but I already knew this is what I was going to do. As the baby kept growing in my wife’s belly my desire to do this grew too.”

Knowing they wanted to be near family, Chris told Jim he wanted to try and open an office in Oklahoma. “It had been one year since we left,” says Chris. “In September 2013, I moved my family back to Oklahoma with a mission of being successful with USHEALTH Advisors in that state. Brandi was far enough along that she was having mild contractions. I remember praying that Brandi didn’t go into labor before we crossed the Red River or we’d have to turn back and stay in Dallas.”

“We came back and found a little house. I started writing policies while my pregnant wife, my oldest daughter and my father-in-law started unloading the U-Haul truck. I knew nothing about health insurance except the card I had in my wallet. I studied it, tried to understand it and said if I can learn it then I know I can be successful.”

What you focus on expands. And Chris had all the reason in the world to focus. His family was about to grow and he needed to hit the ground running. “My first year in the business, our baby, Haven was born. I still remember dialing leads from the hospital room. I had to make this work.”

“The first year actually went very well. I got promoted to a Field Training Agent. I started growing with new agents and that was the hardest, but most rewarding part – teaching others to do this. I struggled, but my personal production was really great so that helped me to grow as well.”

Chris also credits Division Sales Leader Jim Schmitt as being instrumental in helping to build a winning team. “Schmitty came to us and started working on the front lines in 2016. I went from three agents to fifteen solid producers that year, many of which are still my top producers even now.”

Fast forward to today, where Chris is now a Satellite Division Sales Leader with a team that has produced nearly $40 million in issued health policies.

“Life is good,” says Chris. “Once I got going, over the next couple of years we grew the business and as I talk to new agents I look back and know that I almost didn’t do this. When I hire a new agent I can see the decision process in their eyes and know they are unsure. I also know what’s possible. If I hadn’t done this how many lives would remain unchanged? This career completely changed my life – after living paycheck to paycheck and having utilities cut-off – to being really stable and having the time with my kids I would not have had before.”

Chris continues, “It doesn’t even feel like we came to this – it feels like this opportunity found us. I was in dire straits in Texas and I needed something to give me financial freedom. I got all the bad advice from all those who love me – telling me not to do this – that my wife was pregnant it was too risky, etc. But I had a gut feeling, I knew I could do this. I feel like everything happens for a reason. God was testing me and while most people might have slipped back into the false security of a salary position, I thought there was just something about this company that was going to work for me and my family.”

Now that it’s all working, the goal is to keep it going, to spread the word and to cultivate the culture.

“I take a lot of pride in this company,” says Chris. “I’ve always felt like this is my company too. We believe in entrepreneurship – not employees. We’re partners – a team – we give you everything you need. We’ve built processes now too and if we find people and plug them into those processes we’re going to help make them successful. The only thing they need to bring is drive and hustle.”

It’s that extra something that Chris has had from the time he was getting paid under the table to tune ski equipment until he was old enough to get a loan and open his own store. But now his tune has changed, from skateboards and skis to selling and sacrificing to help others.

“My responsibility is primarily to train new agents. Recruiting, contracting and moving them through licensing. I get them in the door and get them trained and tell them my story since in many cases they are scared when they come in. It’s recruit, train, motivate, repeat. Hit your numbers, grow the business, grow the careers, grow the agents and see it really take off.”

There’s great power in persistency and patience and purpose.

Chris says he’s never lost his drive to do what it takes to change his life and the lives of other people. “2020 was a really great year,” says Chris. “We built a new house and finalized Brooklyn’s adoption on her 16th birthday! She finally got to change her name, we were thrilled. So many people look back on 2020 and say they’re glad it’s over. But I say 2020 was a good year for us.”

It’s all in your perspective, the way you look at life. Chris chooses to see the silver lining and knows if you put the same effort into work and into love it will all work out in the end.

“I think I’m a good example that you can pretty much do whatever you want if you can find the motivation to do it. I had a lot of stuff moving against me as a kid, but I went against the grain. If you hustle, you can do anything, it’s so cliche but it’s true. We’re told to be safe in life, but everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”

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 learn more about Mark Brodinsky and his #onebillion mission at, (http://markbrodinsky.life/)      

USHA SM-24-0121               

It’s not always easy to stay focused. The bright and shiny objects that appear along our road in life can divert us onto exits which slow down our progress.

The best are able to stay, for the most part, on course and in their lane, driving straight through until they reach their destination. But that’s not the fulfilment of their journey, the true excitement of it all is who they get to become along the way.

The ones who can avoid the distractions, persevere despite the obstacles and beat back the resistance are the ones who survive and then share the best stories among us.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Leader of the Pack

“It’s not about the quick game. This is the long game. This is really all about customer service, helping the client navigate the insurance market and making sure they are put in the best position. I really try to instill this in my agents, because as we grow it then builds upon itself – and I grow too.” 

Bonnie Phelps knows that success in business, as in all of life, is about patience, perseverance and putting in the time. It’s also about having great survival skills, developing real relationships and the ability to bounce back from any challenge.

Bonnie knows this because she’s lived it.

“The biggest challenge of my life came when I was a freshman in high school,” says Bonnie. “My family consisted of me, my twin sisters, who are about a year older, and my mom and dad. Because of the business he was involved in, my dad wasn’t around much. Right about the time I turned 14, he wasn’t around at all. He left.”

Bonnie says her mom was hurt emotionally and devastated financially – because when her dad moved on the family was left with about six-dollars in the bank.

“It was a tough thing for my mom,” says Bonnie. “She never expected this. She had moved from Scotland to marry my dad, and because he worked so much and made a good living, my mom didn’t have to work. But she did do all the work around the house – home improvement, designing, decorating. She is small, but she is a beast in every sense of the word. But my dad’s leaving shocked my mom and so my sisters and I had to be the force to help her get back to where she was before… including going back to work.”

“At first I was angry about what happened, but when everyone – me, my mom and my sisters, started working I became grateful it happened when it did because we became very independent women and now don’t rely on others to get us anywhere. I give a lot of credit to my mom for that, for being such a great example. She is a great role model. She’s a little Scottish lady, but she means business. We are all on course doing what we are doing and what we love to do – and so much of it is because of her.”

With her mom as the inspirational role model leading the family, Bonnie was able to get busy as well, first working to earn a buck and help the family, but eventually moving forward with her passion for helping other people.

“At 15 I worked in a tanning salon,” says Bonnie. “I worked there until I graduated high school and attended the University of Central Florida. I started off pursuing nursing because even then I wanted to help people in some way, but science was not exactly in my wheelhouse. So I switched to psychology and human resources, merging the two into a business degree.”

During her college career, Bonnie decided to accept a summer volunteer position at the Panther Ridge Conservation Center in Loxahatchee, Florida. Her experience there was the deepening of a personal perspective that has stayed with her since that time…that animals can teach us a lot about life and about love.

“When I was working at the big cat sanctuary with cheetahs and jaguars I was not a cat person,” says Bonnie. “But I learned they’re just like little cats, they want to be loved and can give love right back.”

“I don’t know if it’s the spirit of animals that touches me – they truly mean no harm – animals have always been that warm center for me, back to who we are or who we are supposed to be. We’re all trying to survive each day and protect our families and those we love – and you see that in animals too. Their unconditional love is unmatched.”

While volunteering helped fuel her passion, Bonnie also needed to make a living. To earn money while in school she spent time working in the financial aid office at UCF, before getting a job as a recruiter for a small firm in Orlando, Florida. But for Bonnie, neither position was built to last.

“Working at the university was not great,” says Bonnie. “There was not a lot of upward momentum and most people who worked there stayed there for ten, twenty or thirty years. That was not for me. In my next job as a recruiter for an I.T. company, I was calling people to see if they were interested in a position and talking about in-depth computer skills to encourage them to join the firm, but I had no idea what I was talking about. I was just trying to wing it. It was difficult and it wasn’t something I wanted long-term.”

At the same time, Bonnie was watching what her friend Yasmine Behr was doing at a company called USHEALTH Advisors. “I saw Yasmine was doing great at USHA and loving it,” says Bonnie. “I’ve known Yasmine since my freshman year in college and we operate the same way. I figured if she is doing well and she likes it, I should give it a chance too.”

Bonnie got going with USHEALTH Advisors in February of 2018 and in less than three years she’s helped a lot of people – to the tune of more than $2.5 million in personal issued business and more than two-and-a-half times that number in team issued business as a Field Training Agent in the West Palm Beach office.

Despite all the success however, Bonnie says it was a challenge getting used to the career change.

“My start at USHEALTH Advisors was not easy for me,” says Bonnie. “I never thought I would be in sales, that wasn’t in my wheelhouse, it wasn’t like working in customer service or with animals. And it was a big, big shift from the 9-to-5 work environment where you have these tasks to do – and then you are done with the work and you go home. Working at USHA is not anything close to those metrics. I saw the people around me working hard and knew myself that you need to be in the office as long as it takes on any given day to make it happen.”

“But I almost became too neurotic, worrying about saying all the right things, afraid to answer a question and maybe say the wrong thing, so I got scared of being on the phone. But then I sat with multiple sales leaders, like Josh Cohen, Jennifer Hmielewski, Chris George, Lisa Trotzke and they all really helped me. I could watch and see how each had their own style. Last year’s open enrollment season was a turning point. I was now in the West Palm office and could see it was the right team for me. There was just a different way of explaining things there and making it more personable for the client. I was having really great days, talking to so many people and they were so thankful for the conversation and the assistance. I got past my own barriers and knew that what I was talking about was important. I had always known if I stuck it out and stayed the course then great things would happen.”

Great things have happened. Bonnie is now living proof of the freedom and choices she is experiencing because of her association with USHEALTH Advisors, her leadership team and the agents around her. Most importantly Bonnie understands her role as a leader comes with great expectation and responsibility.

“It’s important that we as leaders set the example from day one,” says Bonnie. “We cannot waiver an inch, we must sacrifice more time and dollars and show others that the right way is the only way to go.”

It also means compassion, caring and helping others to find their why and their way and help lead them to their own desired destination in life.

“I think everyone has a story and everyone has gone through their own version of what I’ve gone through. And it’s not the same for everyone. But how do you move forward from that? Do you head down a good path or a bad one?  It’s a choice. For me with USHA, all of my agents have their own stories too and so there is no one way to lead a pack. You have to listen to everyone individually and help them create a path to meet their needs and desires and hope they will do the same for others.”

Bonnie’s idea of leadership and service is a mirror to the experience she had with the big cats she once cared for. She describes the cheetahs and the panthers as pure souls, without bad intent. Animals love unconditionally and at the end of the day, it’s all about helping those in your care, giving love and making sure your own pack doesn’t just survive… but thrives.

Humans are social animals, looking for that tribe to belong to, for someone to understand them, show them compassion and lend them a helping hand… making the leader of the pack one of the people we admire the most.

It’s all about HOPE, Helpling Other People Everyday – and Bonnie Phelps is leading the pack and leading the way.

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 learn more about Mark Brodinsky and his #onebillion mission at, (http://markbrodinsky.life/)

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