Ultimate insurance profit secret: reactive vs. proactive

Wasted potential.

Excuses.

Whining.

Anger, Bitterness, Resentment.

So many insurance professionals succumb to these debilitating activities and beliefs for one very simple reason - they react instead of proact.

Yes, proact is actually a word - yet it's hardly even in our vocabulary at all.

Daily we find ourselves re-acting to all the issues around us.  Complaining clients, new regulations, the latest about Obamacare, a new lead, a sick child, a spouse unhappy with their work, and on and on and on.

All of these are completely under our control in terms of how we react and more importantly how we proact before any of them ever happen.

Being and thinking in a proactive way is the single most significant mindset strategy to achieving high levels of success financially or in any other area of your life.

Reaction can only yield a solution after the problem has occurred.  In other words, you are forced to deal with and experience the problem, challenge or obstacle in the first place.

Proaction, however, prevents the problem from happening in the first place.  

Consider a simple example of dental care.  We go to the dentist twice a year for a cleaning and check-up.  The purpose of this is primarily to proactively prevent any serious issues from developing.  There are examples or proactive prevention all around us in the healthcare industry.

Yet, in our own businesses, it's day after day of responding, playing catch up, explaining what went wrong, damage control with a client, and just plain reaction.

To truly achieve the success you want, you must adopt and commit to a new way of thinking about your business, your time, your energy, your money.  You must think in proactive terms.

Ask yourself, "How can I prevent this problem from occurring again?"  "What can I do now to conserve my time, money and energy later?"  "What coverage protection recommendations make sense in order to avoid the challenges and obstacles that my competitors will be facing in the future?"

In other words, think ahead.  THINK ahead.  Consider more than the problems of the day and determine a set strategy to prevent them from happening tomorrow.

Yes, it's easy to blame our lack of success on the environment around us - our clients, the economy, government regulations, the 'tough' competition, etc. 

But such blame is also merely a reaction to your own lack of success. 

Sometimes, you must react, and there's nothing wrong with that so long as you continue to think in proactive terms, and do everything you can to prevent problems and challenges from occurring in the first place.

Ultimately, there are no more worthwhile questions you can ask yourself about your life and business than proactive ones.

Today, add the word 'proact' into your vocabulary and use it often!

Always the best!

Last, Best Valentine's Day Gift

Another Valentine’s Day has passed. If you’re like me, you looked high and low for what to get your spouse or loved one for Valentine’s Day which tells them how much you care about them. 

I want to add this to your thoughts before the next Valentine’s Day: Often the best thing we can do for a spouse is proper long-term care Medicaid planning.  Consider it the last, best Valentine’s gift ever!

We look out for and care for our partners throughout life, but many people neglect planning for the day when they might be incapacitated and need long-term care. The lack of planning can be disastrous to a spouse.

Medicaid planning isn’t about taking advantage of the system or helping the super-rich preserve inheritances. At the heart of it, Medicaid Planning is about helping people who are in crisis or might face a crisis provide for their loved ones. 

The reason I’m so passionate about Medicaid planning is that without it, often a spouse will enter a nursing home and drain most of the family resources … leaving the healthy spouse to go broke. Most community spouses do not adequately understand the Medicaid spend-down. That lack of knowledge causes them to spend far more money on their spouse’s care than the law requires.

As insurance agents, we need to focus on the human side of Medicaid planning. Leaving a loved one to exhaust all retirement resources for long-term care is not how we want to treated a spouse, but the lack of planning can put them in a situation that makes them feel like all of their financial security is at stake. This can lead to sleepless nights and anxiety that nobody would wish on their Valentine.

The role of the Medicaid knowledgeable insurance agent is to help guide the healthy spouse through one of the most complex government benefits systems ever imagined and make sure that they don’t spend one dollar more than the law requires. The Spousal Impoverishment rules are there to help protect the community spouse, but the average person gets a headache just trying to understand the basics of how the system works let alone the planning opportunities available to them.

The work necessary to attain Medicaid eligibility when a spouse has immediate long-term care is known as crisis planning. But crisis planning is only half of the equation. While people are still healthy enough to explore their options, planning ahead for long-term care Medicaid can give both spouses the peace of mind that their loved one will be cared for if they all of a sudden start running up an $8,000-a-month nursing home bill.

Planning ahead for long-term care Medicaid says “I LOVE YOU” in a whole new way and makes sure when a healthcare crisis strikes, their Valentine won’t be left in financial crisis, too.

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John Hancock Long-Term Care marketing update

15-minute Brainshark (FREE however, requires guestbook sign in) training presentation: Walks through the potential tax deductibility of LTC insurance premiums for individuals, the self-employed and business owners. In addition to the guidelines for each, examples of how to calculate the portion of the premium that may be deductible are also included.

The John Hancock tax guide for 2014 (GFR-TX)  and the LTC insurance state tax incentive guide (LTC-1199) have been updated and are now available.

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Suffering from 'spinning wheel' syndrome? Here's the cure...

Do you suffer from spinning wheel syndrome?

Here are some of the symptoms:

• Feeling like you're in a constant state of overwhelm
• Not having complete, total confidence your direction is the right one
• Taking one step forward and two steps back with your book-of-business
• Working harder and harder with little to no results to show for it
• Getting criticized by yourself and family for being too focused on work
• Criticizing yourself for not being more successful

If these describe your situation, you are not alone.

Today, we want to offer three pieces of sage advice we've received that we would do well to listen to more ourselves.

1) Limit your access to information.

I realize that such advice coming from a Sales Team Leader that specializes in producing information to help our Field Representatives grow is a little odd.

But the truth is, you are being bombarded with information from thousands of sources every single day.  Trying to filter it out has become a full time job that is eating up much or all of your valuable and productive time.

Thus, limit your sources of information.  In essence, this means removing distractions from your life.  Some of those distractions have become habits like watching the news or finding ways to avoid work you're afraid to complete.  Those distractions will be difficult to rid from your day, but if you want off of the merry-go-round, then you simply have no choice.

2) Integrate more discipline into your life.

One mentor of ours put it to us this way...

"It may be time to grow up." 

His point was that it's time to force discipline upon yourself so you can achieve your full potential. 

Yes, this is easier said than done, so you will have to determine if the inconvenience of change and effort is worth the result it produces.  That result being a fulfilling life moving you ever closer your goals and objectives.

3) Clarity

This is a powerful word. 

In our experience, we've found that most insurance professionals never really move ahead because they have no distinct and CLEAR goal or objective.

And we're not only talking about a yearly goal, but a monthly one, a weekly one and a daily one.

You can have more than one, but each goal AND its outcome must be crystal clear in your mind's eye.

Putting all this together looks like this:

Discipline + Limited Sources of Information + Clear Focus on Your Objective => The Cure for Spinning Wheel Syndrome (and with it a life of satisfaction and achievement.)

Isn't it time for you to stop spinning your wheels?

Sincerely,

Your 2020 Coach

How much do you know about health care reform?

When your clients ask questions about the Affordable Care Act, do you have the right answers? This brief video can help! Watch it now and share with clients.

Watch the video here.