Share the Love - Tierra Bianchi
“We’re all a part of God’s great big family.
And the truth, you know, love is all we need.”
– Lyrics from, We Are The World
When asked what’s one of the greatest things she’s strived for and achieved in life so far, Tierra Bianchi can break it down to one word: love.
“I would say my greatest accomplishment is the way that my team and the people around me perceive and love me,” says Tierra. “I feel like the biggest attribute to me as a leader in any organization I’ve been in, or any group of friends I’ve ever been a part of is just being able to know that the people around me genuinely feel the love that I have for them, the care that I have for them and that it’s reciprocated.”
And there you have it, not just asked for but given and received. The key to leadership is the underlying vibration of love, transparency, and vulnerability, some of the most attractive traits of a leader.
“I have had a lot of different leadership roles,” says Tierra. “I’ve been the president of my sorority and that was something that I did not expect to be at all, but it came from a group of individuals that loved me so much that they thought I deserved it, so I did it. And then moving forward into USHEALTH Advisors, and the role that I have now, I’ve always just sought true, genuine relationships and care with people. So I base my accomplishments around the amount of people I’ve been able to help in my lifetime. And at USHA, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So that’s why I love what I do so much here.”
Tierra is loving life as a Field Sales Leader at USHEALTH Advisors, she was recently promoted, after proving herself as a strong personal producer and team leader as a Field Training Agent. To date, Tierra has produced more than $7 million in personal insurance sales and more than $20 million as a team leader.
Yet with all the outward success, there were internal struggles that had kept Tierra thinking small, doubting herself, and thinking she didn’t belong. It’s part of the human condition, everyone struggles with something, and no one is immune. But when you share your success from those struggles we all benefit, we all learn, we all connect.
“I guess one of the biggest challenges has been trying to find my way and my self-worth throughout my life,” says Tierra. “I had a good childhood, nothing to complain about. I just never really found my place. I have a twin brother who is type A and I’m a type B personality. He is amazing at sports, always listened to Mom and Dad, never went to parties, and always went to bed on time. I was the one throwing raves in the backyard or the basement, not getting good grades, getting detention. And I kind of learned to play that role and I kept doing it for most of my life.”
“My dad used to always say to me, “Tierra, you’re going to be the most infamous criminal in America, or the most successful businesswoman, you just have to pick which one. “I went through a couple of bad relationships. I came to the University of Tampa from New Jersey, and when I came down here, I was 18 years old and living in the sunny state of Florida with no supervision and just life at my disposal. I kind of ran with it and not in the best way possible. I went down a bad path with just drinking, drugs, getting deep into that party lifestyle, and letting everything else go. And I was used to disappointing my parents. So disappointing them in college when I’m hundreds of miles away didn’t affect me too much. I just kept playing into my, I guess, villain role.”
That’s a dramatic statement for someone, who before college, believed she had a higher calling, one that would take her halfway around the world. While she might say there was a villain role, it was an internal belief, not an external reality. Many times in life we feel lost and need to be found by ourselves, winning the inner game that leads to a better world around us.
“In high school, I started to find passion through helping other people,” says Tierra. “I was watching a show at the time, and it sparked my interest in becoming a doctor. So I made my whole life trajectory to be a trauma surgeon in the army. Just like the most extreme thing you could ever do with your life. I spent all of my high school summers and the majority of my college summers shadowing surgeons in operating rooms, doing clinical research, traveling across the world to witness surgeries, and seeing other hospitals. I was going to dedicate my life to that one thing because I thought that that was the greatest calling or purpose that I could do with my life, being able to save someone with my bare hands.”
“And I also thought about how I would handle it if I couldn’t save someone. I’ve always been a strong person. I rack my brain to where the strength came from, but to me, it’s just the high risk, high reward I’m okay with if I did my best, maybe potentially losing someone, but also being the one that someone says to, “you saved my mom, my sister, my brother, whatever.” And that kind of fueled me for a very long time. So I got through freshman year, I got through sophomore year, and then I don’t know what it was, but I just was so in this mundane task every day of, I go to school, I was a cheerleader, the worst cheerleader ever. I’m always a beat behind everybody else. And I just felt like I was living for the weekend, living for these parties, and I was stuck in this redundant routine of just messing up and I wanted to get out of it really, really bad.”
“So I asked my parents one day if I could go to boarding school. No kid does that, but I was like, I want to go to boarding school. And I had two picked out, one in California and one in Maine, and my mom said, “You’re not going to California.” So I said, all right, Maine, it is. I got this scholarship there to the point it was almost free. And I remember my dad drove me up there, it was an eight-hour drive and he was so proud of me. That was the first time in my life he’s ever told me he was proud of me and it made me feel really good. I was like, okay, I’m doing something right. He dropped me off, and it was a school in Pittsfield, Maine. Pittsfield has one stoplight in the entire town. There were 400 kids in that school, 300 of them were from overseas and all across the United States.”
“I’ll never forget, my dad drops me off and it’s a dorm room like a hundred years old and it’s all girls in the dorm. I’m sitting in there with some girls I don’t know, in this shoebox. And I just looked around and I was like, what did I just do to myself? I was coming from a place where I was the popular girl in school. I was in a high school of 2,000 people. I was throwing parties, and getting away with murder, and here I am in the strictest school I’ve ever been in. I am away from home for the first time in my life. I learned a lot about myself that year.”
“At 16 years old, I didn’t know a single soul around me, so I kind of had to get to know me, I had to get to know other people. I had to let myself come out of my shell. And I loved it so much because the entire year I didn’t drink a sip of alcohol. I just found so much joy in the soberness of it all, the innocence of it all, making friends that were from halfway around the world and finding support with each other. That year was hard for me, but it showed me that every time I go somewhere that isn’t my roots, my hometown where I grew up, I’m giving myself the ability to create a new identity for myself that maybe I couldn’t get away from back then because people were kind of holding me to who I was.”
You might want to go back and read that last quote/paragraph from Tierra. Where can you discover and experience awareness, growth, and abundance? As Tierra, learned, and so many can of us can share in her life lesson, it’s from the inside out. It’s the sweet and silent solitude of learning who you are at your core. Then being able to relate to others as you being you.
If you do you the world will beat a path to your door.
But… as life does to us again and again, it puts obstacles in our path and then we give in to our resistance, distancing ourselves from our true purpose. Tierra is no different. After a year of boarding school, she left and went back to her old life and environment where temptation patiently lay in wait for Tierra to arrive.
“Fast forward five years later, it got to the point I still didn’t graduate college. I didn’t feel like I was worth much. I felt like I was letting everybody in my life down. I was still partying, and in a really toxic relationship that I refused to get out of. By the time I arrived at USHA, I was broken.”
Despite opening herself up to discover what was within, for Tierra, the demons were still lurking about. But once she arrived at USHEALTH Advisors she chose to turn around and hug those demons, thank them for the lessons and learnings, and create her new, best life.
She would become an example for others to follow.
“I was super naive and just willing to try anything at that point,” Tierra says. “So that’s why I didn’t have any skepticism when they brought me in here. I was like, sure, teach me what to do and I’ll do it. And along the way I fought through more – let’s get out of this crappy relationship, let’s stop these bad habits. Let’s get away from the friends that I think that I love, but that are always putting me in positions where I have to make bad choices. And that was probably one of the biggest challenges in my life, was transitioning from the person that I was into who I wanted to be. And that was my whole first year at USHEALTH Advisors. I’m always so thankful for the people that I met here because they showed me the other side of myself that I really didn’t know existed. That has taken my life from here to zero to hero.”
From zero to hero. So, it was Tierra getting back to where we all begin, as miracles, masterpieces, and heroes. From there, after learning who she was and what she could accomplish with habits and discipline, Tierra was in a position to lead others. She also had a better platform from her past than she ever realized. While early on Tierra fought back against her foundation, she soon began to embrace the examples she had witnessed from her mom and dad. When we’re young, even though we watch, we don’t always listen.
“My mom and dad were actually both in insurance,” says Tierra. “My mom never told me. She told me this was a scam and not to do it. And then six months after I started making it at USHA, she said to me, “I was in insurance too.” I’m like, oh, great, now you tell me. But they worked at Mutual of Omaha and my mom was a superstar. Then, at the age of 31, she got pregnant with twins. At month five she was ordered to be on bed rest so she couldn’t walk, couldn’t work, couldn’t do anything. And once we were born, two babies are harder than one. So it was more like, who’s going to work? Who’s not going to work?”
“She took a step back, even though she was making most of the money, and she just raised us. Never went back to work for my entire 18 years of growing up and living in that house. So my dad was the one that went to work full-time. He is an immigrant from South America. He came over when he was 16 and didn’t speak a lick of English. He never went to college and barely graduated high school. But when he met my mom, they started to work together. And then once I was born, I remember my dad sitting in bed. He was a soccer player at the time, but he tore his ACL. And then once he tore his ACL, he’d always be in bed with this big ice pack on his knee studying. I realize now he was going back to school to get some type of degree, to get a job.”
“He started as a financial planner. He has worked his way up to being one of the best financial planners in the company at this point. He manages millions of dollars in accounts every single year, and he still goes back to school. I went home last Thanksgiving and he was studying with a Yale book for an extra degree. I’m like, “Dad, you’re still going?” And he said, “Always be a student of life Ti.” He just has that mentality of you can do whatever you want in this world if you put your mind to it and he has shown me that my entire life.”
“It’s truly phenomenal to see what my dad’s been able to build in the years of me growing from a young girl into an adult. It is honestly what has always inspired me to be fearless and go after my dreams, regardless of how big or unattainable they seem, because I mean, he did it and he sacrificed everything for me to be able to do it too. So it’s almost an obligation that I feel to go out and grab life by the balls just to show him that he didn’t do it for nothing.”
We reflect, we realize, we remember. Tierra looked back at what her parents had taught her with their actions. You can’t connect the dots moving forward, only looking back. Besides the lessons from her parents, Tierra says she also learned so much about herself when she decided to venture overseas to Greece, to pursue what she thought might be her career as a trauma surgeon.
“The people I met play a piece in who I am today,” says Tierra, “because they showed me just a little bit more about myself when I was over in that country and once again, didn’t have anyone that I knew. It taught me how much more lovable of a person I could be. I feel like I’ve always shined a negative light on myself for whatever reason. And it just gave me so much more confidence in this world to believe I could go anywhere, find a group of people and I could make a place there and I could build relationships. It gave me this sense that, there’s nothing that I can’t do. It made me feel a lot more grateful for what I had, but then also more confident in my abilities to go out and do whatever I needed to and know that I was going to be okay. Every place I went gave me an extra piece of me that I still hold onto today.”
And today Tierra finds herself in the place to focus on gratitude for all she’s accomplished and continues to accomplish at USHEALTH Advisors.
“My dad instilled this belief in me to do whatever it takes and anything is possible. And I started to see that there are so many people at USHA who don’t think that way, they don’t think that it’s possible, don’t believe in themselves. And that’s the first thing you need. You have to have this unwavering belief in yourself.”
“My people, my team, know I care about them. And the first thing I try to do with an agent when I meet them is try to understand them. Tell me about you. What’s the relationship like with your parents? Why are you here? Because we’ve got to assume that everybody who comes to USHA is broken in one way, shape, or form. Nobody’s rich and nobody’s got it figured out in life. It’s just not how it works.”
“I think back to me starting here and I think back about how much I needed somebody to mentally support and love me and show me my worth. So I try to do that with other people, and I open up first. I tell them about me. They tell me about them. I find a way to relate to them because I’ve been through so many experiences and I’ve met so many people and had so many relationships. My past is one of the best blessings of my life. Sharing what I’ve been through gives me the ability to build this trust within them to where they trust me, and I trust them. I know that if I have an agent that’s in the right mindset they can make this career work.”
There is no defense to love. Tierra wants to be remembered for being that person, the one who turns someone else’s life around. It’s how she wants to be seen, then to see, hear and understand others.
“I’ve thought about this before,” says Tierra. “I want my legacy to be because someone says they knew Tierra, and because of meeting her, I believed in myself, and I was able to go out in this world and do anything that I put my mind to.”
Give love. Share Love. It’s the only way.
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
Meant for More - Ivelina Dimitrova
In life, you can’t be afraid to go where you’ve never gone and do what you’ve never done, because both are necessary to have what you’ve never had and be who you’ve never been.
Drop the mic on that philosophy and then pass that mic over to Ivelina Dimitrova. Ivelina has no fear.
“So when I was 25 I left everything behind in Bulgaria,” says Ivelina. “I had $500 in my pocket. I won a green card through the lottery there and that’s how I ended up here. I packed two suitcases and I moved from Bulgaria to Delaware. I had one friend who I had known from before, she’s Dominican, and I met her through a work and travel program that I had been in while I was in college. She hosted me at her house and I stayed there for two months until I figured out what I was going to do.”
In other words, it wasn’t just a simple move from one state to another in the US, but instead a move away from another country, another culture, and another way of life.
“I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Bulgaria and the country was just coming out of communism when I was born, says Ivelina. “I remember when I was little, my mom had to stand in line at the grocery store to be able to get a jar of yogurt or milk or rice or a bottle of oil, cooking oil because we were still under that regime and it was kind of difficult. So I grew up knowing that everything is limited. We had limited resources, you didn’t have any fancy clothes or own anything too shiny. You have one option for everything in the store and everything was really limited. So I grew up knowing to value things. I also grew up knowing that one day I want my life to be different. I don’t have to be limited. I want to get the things that I want and do the things that I want and I don’t want to be limited by certain situations.”
Since coming to USHEALTH Advisors in 2018, Ivelina has been living as limitless as possible, producing more than $5 million in personal insurance policies issued, and is now a Satellite Division Sales Leader with the company. It’s been quite the journey, but Ivelina has faced and overcome every challenge.
“So six years ago, it was a different environment with the company,” says Ivelina. “We didn’t have as much diversity and then there was no one with an accent in my office making sales. When we were doing a script practice, I looked at another agent and she said, “You know what? It’s going to be very difficult for you to make sales with this accent.” So I walked out, I cried in my car and I had a choice to stay there sad and dejected or to prove them all wrong. So it became a really big motivation for me to prove them wrong. It took me a little bit longer than your average agent to get things going for myself, but once I did, it’s been only good things from there.
Ivelina says she appreciated the support from her team in Tampa, but her biggest supporter and motivator was someone even closer to her, the man she met when she came to America.
“I actually met my husband Andy in Delaware and he’s also from Bulgaria,” says Ivelina. “We had a similar story and we connected quickly and got married pretty fast. And we’ve been married for more than 10 years now.”
“My husband has been the one person who’s always been there for me,” says Ivelina, “and he was the one that believed in me more than I did. He was working for a plumbing company at the time I started at USHA. That’s not what he wanted to do. He had to get a job while I was trying to figure out my life. So he was basically sacrificing for me to try to set up my business. And after I started making things happen for myself, actually about three or four years ago, he started helping me as an assistant. Once I was a top producer, he was helping me, working his other job during the day, and then helping me out. And three years ago he decided to completely quit his job and he got licensed as well. He doesn’t work with USHA, he’s a marketplace-licensed broker. So he helps out with referrals and most importantly, he’s my right-hand man.”
Ivelina says it was also her husband who pushed her to join USHA in the first place, even though he had been leery about a move from Delaware down to Florida. The couple moved south after Ivelina got a promotion working as a manager at a retail store, but it wasn’t long before she said she had enough.
“I walked out of my corporate job because I had four weeks of paid time off and I had shaken hands with my upline and they told me that in October of that year, I could go see my family back in Bulgaria. But when the time came and I said, “Hey, I’m about to go see my family, as we agreed” they said, “Nope, sorry, it’s a bad time, you can’t go.” I said, “What happened to my paid time off?” They looked at me with a smirk and said, you lose it. And that’s when my heart dropped and I said, I can’t do this. I did not move here for this. And I walked away from what I thought was a good corporate job and I sat at home for about three months. I told my husband, I’m not going to get to work for anyone else who can control my life or tell me when I can go see my family and when I can’t.”
After Ivelina saw the initial pitch for the opportunity with USHEALTH Advisors she was still unsure, but it was Andy who told her to take the risk, even though taking risks wasn’t something Andy didn’t like doing himself. But he believed in his wife’s ability to make it happen.
“I said to my husband, this is too good to be true,” says Ivelina. “I walked into a pitch and a group interview and Jason Greif, (USHA Regional Leader), came in, gave us his speech and I thought, again, this is just too good to be true. I walked out and called my husband, I said, “Nope, I can’t do this. I just interviewed for this scam job, it sounds too good. I am not going to waste my time. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“My husband said, “What else are you going to do at home? You’ve been home for three months. You have no idea what you’re going to do and you say you don’t want to work corporate, so here’s an opportunity for you to be self-employed.” “And I was like, you know what? That makes sense. And just the fact that my husband was so supportive it kind of pushed me to do it. And once I started working with USHEALTH Advisors and I looked around, everyone was just so successful. I was like, if all these people can make it, I have to make it. I have no plan B, no choice, no other options. This is it. I have to make it work.”
Work, it’s the four-letter word that is the differentiator between those who are successful and those who are not. But there’s another four-letter word that is a separator between those who just make it and those who rise to the top of their game.
That word is risk.
Since her life back in Bulgaria, not only has Ivelina been willing to put in the work but she has never been one to shy away from taking the risk to get better, to think outside the box, to provide value to others, and to make her own life better. Her advice should help anyone looking to take their own career to the next level.
“I was open-minded to try new things and different things. I was always looking for different sources of leads, for how I can grow my business,” says Ivelina. “I was always looking for something new to expand. I think before I was a top producer, I realized the need for an assistant. So I hired an assistant quite early. That helped me out a lot. I think it’s very important. That’s one thing I teach my agents. Once you can afford to get an assistant, even if it’s part-time, it’s going to tremendously help to scale your business. And then once the opportunity presents itself, if you can bring your life partner, brother, sister, or anyone that is family in to help because your family will have your back and be more invested than anyone else, that’s also a game changer as well.”
“But I’ll tell you what, at the beginning, I was pounding the phone just like anyone else and it was more challenging for me because of my accent, but I had to embrace it. So that was the adversity I had to overcome because in my head I thought people would not want to talk to me or buy from me. After all, I have an accent. But I made it work to where I was having fun with it. I completely did not care. I acted like, what accent? I don’t have one. And it worked in my favor. I feel like people would love talking to me because of my accent. And I always had little jokes. I always make them laugh. But I kept saying to myself, you know what, this phone thing is not great for me. I’m better in person. Let me try to build my business in person.”
“I became a big networking person and I started going to a lot of networking events. Maybe that’s why it took a little bit longer for me at the beginning, but I knew that’s something that I could actually scale. I was part of BNI groups, networking groups, you name it. There was a point before the pandemic when I knew 50% of the business owners in Tampa Bay and everyone knew me. I managed to become very well connected, my phone was ringing, and I was getting referrals, like inbound calls, which was amazing. I established really good connections among the small businesses in Tampa Bay. So I became good at networking and then I was like, well, I can scale this. And I started thinking I’m going to take advantage of my disadvantage, which is that I’m Bulgarian. Hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians live in the U.S.”
It was an idea and a mindset and a way to give back that fueled Ivelina’s career.
“So we started focusing on helping and serving my niche market, the Bulgarians in the U.S., and trust me, then I understood we did not move here for nothing. If I have this mindset, then most Bulgarians have this mindset. We’re hardworking people and a lot of them have businesses and are successful. So I started looking to educate the self-employed and business owners who are Bulgarians and then created a brand with my husband’s help, called BulGuard Health Solutions, catering to the Bulgarian community. We’re kind of popular in that community. They have seen us on Facebook, and they have seen our videos and our events. We are major sponsors to some of the Bulgarian Culture centers in the U.S. We donate a lot to them to maintain those centers, like the one they have in Chicago, where there is a big Bulgarian hub. So that’s something that has worked for us. We get multiple phone calls every day. I get at least seven to eight phone calls from people, mostly Bulgarian, and some other Eastern Europeans as well. It’s all word of mouth, and it’s been very good.”
Everything is going well for Ivelina, her husband Andy, and her growing team, but she still aches for the one thing that would make her overjoyed right now… and that is to be with her family. Ivelina’s parents were the ones who years ago applied to enter the green card lottery for a chance to come to the U.S. They didn’t win, but as Ivelina soon learned, she did!
It was exciting and heartbreaking all at the same time.
My parents have been applying for a green card lottery since it came into existence in Bulgaria in 1994, hoping to get it. I didn’t even know that they submitted my paperwork. My dad called me one day and said, “Hey, congrats, you want a green card?” And I said, “Well, I never applied for one.” He’s like, “Well, we did it for you so you’re good to go. We didn’t get it, but you can take advantage of it.” So I felt like I couldn’t disappoint them. They wanted me to get something more from my life.”
“At first I said, no, I’m not going back to the U.S., I’m staying in Bulgaria. I’m finishing my master’s degree in a couple of months. I have a good job and a good apartment. I thought I was having a good life and I don’t remember exactly what happened back then, but in a few weeks I thought about it and I decided that if God opens a door for you, don’t shut it, go right through it. And I thought to myself, you know what, I’ll give it a chance and if it doesn’t work out, I can always come back home.”
It took some time, but it did work out for Ivelina and her new life in the United States. She just wishes she could have brought her parents here as well.
“It’s an emotional topic for me,” says Ivelina, “because just a few months ago I applied for my parents to get a tourist visa just so they could come visit me, and they got denied. I think I’m going to get a lawyer and try to help them get a green card. I don’t think they want to live here at this point. They’re in their early sixties and have a peaceful, comfortable life in Bulgaria. I help them out financially, so I don’t think they want to move here, but I really would love for them to visit. I know they do want to visit as well, so I’m going to try again. But it’s challenging. It’s very hard and it takes time.”
It seems everything worthwhile does take time, even building an amazing career at USHEALTH Advisors. So Ivelina has some advice for a prospective agent, or even a new one starting at the company, and it’s advice that would be useful for anyone starting anything of value, especially a new business.
“I think no matter how great you are, if you’re in the wrong environment, you are worthless,” says Ivelina. “So you have to make sure you’re in the right environment and you’re surrounded by the right people. And you have to always focus on surrounding yourself with people who truly care for you and want to help you and support you. I found that with people like Jason Greif. He’s been a tremendous mentor for me and he was the one that planted the seed of this dream that I didn’t even know I had the capacity for.”
“Another thing I’ll say is that the only limits you have on your potential are the limits you set for yourself. If you truly believe that nothing is going to stop you, then it’s going to happen. You accomplish what you believe in. I think it’s all mindset.”
“Years ago, I thought it sounded impossible for me to get where I am right now. If you told me I’d have laughed at you. It seemed impossible. Every single day I had to repeat to myself, I’m successful, I’m successful. And now I’m making a multiple six-figure income and I live in a beautiful home in the nicest neighborhood in the area. I have a happy marriage. I have to remind myself all the time, and I have to manifest it every single day. And that’s been my mindset. Even if it was not the reality when I first thought about it, I repeated it to myself and I envisioned it and I believed it with my entire body.”
“I told myself I was meant for more.”
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
Willing to Change - Frankie Bakirtzis
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale
Let’s not bury the lead. In 2023 Frankie Bakirtzis was the number one personal producer at USHEALTH Advisors. It’s no small feat, in fact, it’s a gargantuan accomplishment. In 365 days Frankie produced more than $4 million in individual health insurance applications. If that wasn’t enough, in only two-and-a-half years, Frankie figured out how to scale to the top of the mountain at the company and produce more than $10 million in sales since the day he contracted with USHA.
All of this made possible by one decision, the hardest decision many of us face, the decision to change. Change is inevitable, growth is optional. So if change is destined, and if you take control of that change, you can change your destiny.
“If I trust in something, I can do it,” says Frankie. The first thing Frankie had to trust in was himself and this didn’t come easy. Before he walked in the door at USHEALTH Advisors, and for too many years, Frankie was placing a losing bet in his life, again and again and again.
The bet Frankie made was he could do anything and everything to run away from his demons. He built a fortress around his heart and his past, one with seemingly insurmountable high walls made out of alcohol, drugs and gambling.
A fortress of addiction.
So many times the path of life is laid out this way. How can you know the sweet taste of freedom, of true joy, see the light and feel the warmth of abundance, until you have lived in the cold prison of darkness?
For Frankie the foundation of all of it began early in life, hard times forced upon him and his family by circumstance.
“I grew up in West Orange, New Jersey in a very business oriented household,” says Frankie. “My family came here from Greece. My dad was kind of the miracle American boy. He was the first one born here in the states, in the sixties, and his parents were already in their fifties. They had my dad and he was 15, or 20 years younger than all of his siblings. My dad lost his own father when my dad was only 18. My dad had to give up his college football dream and take over the family business – a hot dog stand. He was able to scale the hot dog stand from a hot dog stand to a diner to a supermarket.”
“And that was the journey of my early childhood… my dad. It was always scaling the family business and mom was always helping build the family and also build the businesses. And when dad was 37 and I was 13, all of a sudden he was diagnosed with kidney disease, both of his kidneys failed, and he was about three years too late on the wait list. But my ex-aunt, my dad’s brother’s ex-wife, got tested with one of the last minute tests. It became a miracle story because she was a match. My dad got the kidney and had another chance at life. But we faced a lot of adversity during that time. We went from owning a business to owning nothing, and that’s when it was I who had to really step up to the plate, not because I was old enough to take care of the family from a business standpoint, but just keep the house in order with dad being ill and all of the things that were thrown at us, I needed to put my big boy pants on pretty early.”
“To cope with it all I really dove into sports. I found a lot of success and was always very regimented in school. I did well in school and ultimately went to college on a scholarship, but them got super complacent in college. I started to realize I was always looking for my dad’s attention. And once I felt like I either achieved that or it wasn’t what I wanted to be, I started acting out.”
“I settled for not going to the NFL and I felt I had hit my ceiling, or others told me I had,” says Frankie. “I let other people’s voices dictate my own belief in myself, which I have since been able to look back on and think, yeah, that’s why I didn’t try. I mean solely because I didn’t have the belief and without belief, there’s no trust.”
“And once I got comfortable, I got really comfortable and started making some bad decisions that led me down a path that I was dependent upon. Specifically a really, really strong gambling addiction and it to cope with that addiction, I turned even more, including drugs and alcohol. My whole identity had been submerged in sports and especially football, and once I gave up football I was lost. So I was finding myself in gambling, alcohol and drugs, but losing myself at the same time and all of this was really, really hard to walk away from.”
Frankie says gambling especially is a tough addiction to deal with because it’s a silent killer.
“Personally, I think gambling is going to have even more dramatic effects on our society than alcohol will a decade from now. Because it is one of the addictions you can’t see, you can’t smell, you really can’t notice it. And because of that it is so dangerous. You could be sick and suffering and no one knows and no one will know. Whereas with most addictions you can see the physical consequence, gambling is totally an emotional disorder. So it’s not that every person that gambles is going to have a gambling addiction, but I think with the mental state of our country and emotional disorders being more prevalent, gambling is scary.”
For Frankie it was more than several years of the same vicious cycle of gambling, drugs and alcohol until he fortunately found an outlet, and locked himself away from all the vices that were attempting to squeeze the life out of his future.
“At age 24, is when I really put in the effort to get sober,” says Frankie. “I had to give up all my friends, all the places I went to and all the things I used to do. And I basically locked myself in LA Fitness. For weeks I would be there for 16-hours-a-day, working out, reading, showering, sauna, spa, basketball – just because I didn’t trust myself anywhere else. That was back in 2018, and I really committed to a program.”
But the program was just the beginning. Through all his addictions, Frankie had been masking the one thing he craved, the one every human being craves the most, to feel that you have value, you are appreciated, to believe that you matter. And so it wasn’t just a program of sobriety that brought Frankie back to center… he needed more.
What Frankie had been seeking, was love.
“I found a program and a really good group of guys that just loved me for who I was,” says Frankie. “They didn’t judge anything I’ve done and just loved on me. And it was that taste of love that I received that changed my life because it was there in abundance. I learned about their own experiences of where they came from. I knew some of them personally from when they were in the throws of their addictions. So to see them change, I knew it was possible, I knew it was real. So I just had a strong element of trust in the program. That was such a critical lesson for me at the age of 24, because it shifted my perspective on everything going forward because it was so clear to me that if I trust something, I can do it.”
“And if I don’t trust it, I can’t. So for my whole life, I measured my actions, I measured my worth, I measured who I am based off of what I do. And I always struggled because it was this thought process that if you mess up, you’re a bad person, if you do good, you’re a good person. And it just led me down a really dark path because I just was led by shame and guilt. So experiencing love the way I did changed my ability to love other people – but before I could do that – I had to love myself first and foremost.”
Love, support and a discovery of who Frankie could be as a human being, what he had to offer, what worth he could bring to the world. Right before he made the decision to get sober, Frankie says he read something that turned him around. It’s been said that one book, one chapter, one sentence, one word can change a life.
“Right before I got sober, I was in a psychiatric unit for three weeks just because I was so unstable. I needed severe medical attention. And that was one of the big reasons I didn’t trust myself anywhere else other than LA Fitness. And then I read a book by Francis Chen, called Crazy Love, and a line in the book I read then shaped the trajectory of my life from that moment on – people will judge what you’ve done, but God caress about who you can become. It was just too close to my own story to not take it for what it was because I would say it’s superstition, or it’s just chance or whatever the case was that it was too close to home to not pursue that message, that path. So I was like, alright, I just read this book. I just got exposed to these things.”
Around the same time Frankie also met a popular pastor at the gym and joined a church about five miles from where he grew up. Faith was about to play its hand, and better than any hand Frankie had ever bet.
“So I get planted in this church, which is where I meet Andrea, who would become my wife, and a year into my recovery, I’m into my new faith, which we’re born again Christians. I grew up Greek Orthodox and would go to service and not even know the language. So I certainly didn’t have a relationship with a higher power. It was more of a tradition than a practice or relationship.”
All was going well until a scandal rocked the church that hurt both Frankie and his wife to their core since they had put a lot of trust in their pastor and his wife.
“It was a very public scandal and it got pretty nasty and we were very much a transplant church, so our whole community up and went back to where they’re from. So we were left alone during Covid to ourselves with no one. It’s just like, wait, we’re married a year and this marriage thing is really hard and now we’re all alone.”
“I felt like I finally built trust with loved ones again because the pastor and I were very close. And here it is and it’s like, oh, Frankie’s still caught up in the same old story, but now it’s got a Christian spin to it. I was so hurt by it that I couldn’t see it for what it was and my wife and I decided we needed to hit a reset on our own marriage. It had such an impact on us because we were so close to the pastor and his wife that we were basically learning how to be a married couple alongside of them. But I felt like we were just molding into who we were around them, rather than coming together and figuring out on who we are.”
Frankie and his wife decided to head south, move to Bluffton, South Carolina rent a house, and hit the reset button to get away from distractions. They were both wrapping up school and because of Covid, could do it virtually. But while figuring out who they were and what their marriage was all about, a few guys Frankie met on the golf course started telling him that he should move to Nashville, that’s where they said he and Andrea could build a better life.
“We just had this unwavering pull to lift this electric fence that had been around the northeast for my family and my wife’s family since they migrated to the states. We love and respect our families, but we can’t live with them and make decisions with them anymore.”
A month later we’re making the 11-hour drive with our two dogs down to Tennessee. And we knew on the car ride to Tennessee, without even ever visiting Nashville, that we were moving here because of this magnetic pull. Neither of us had jobs. And seven days later after moving down here I walk into a USHEALTH Advisors office and it was kind of off to the races.”
That’s an understatement.
In no time at all “Frankie B”, as he is known, was making a name for himself at USHA, because of his exemplary production as a new insurance agent. He says he credits so much of his success to his team of leaders, but one in particular, another rising star at USHA, Ben Fredricks.
“Meeting Ben and being able to talk to Ben was the biggest injection of my belief in this company. I was able get to know Ben and his belief and confidence rubbed off on me and it made the transition for me really easy. That’s where it wasn’t blind faith for very long, because Ben was able to instill that in me and I was able to latch onto it and find my way pretty quickly.”
So besides Ben’s support, what everyone wants to know is what’s Frankie B’s secret?
“This is one of the most frustrating things for most people,” explains Frankie, “because when I explain it, I always use the concept of a car and driving. We mindlessly get in our car every single day and trust that that it is going to get us to work safely. And it was that same level of faith and trust in this company. I had faith and belief in our products, in our systems that freed me to do what I do on a day-to-day basis, where I have an overwhelming amount of trust in not just what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it and it will get me where I want to go. I don’t want to say it’s easy, it does take a lot of hard work, but with that as the core, it is the secret. It truly is the secret, trust and belief.”
“And it has to be unwavering. I know when I have our client on the phone, I can’t get in the way of helping them. And because I have that belief that they’re our client, it helps me not get in the way because I don’t have to push, I don’t have to press, I don’t have to convince, I just have to show. I’m not going to pressure you. I’m not going to say we have to do this now, the clients feel that relief and belief on the phone and that makes it easy for me.”
Frankie says it’s also about investing in your business and in yourself. Something he learned from his dad, the man who’s attention he always craved. Frankie says his dad set the example for him to follow.
“It’s scale,” says Frankie. “I think that’s where I can go back in time and credit my whole history to this concept. Whether it’s watching my dad scale businesses, growing up and seeing the suffering, see the good times and the bad times, and trust in the process and continue to show up and be process oriented. It doesn’t matter what the results look like, the results are going to be what they’re intended to look like as long as you keep doing what you’re supposed to do. So I’ve been super process-driven from a young age, but then also the trust and belief gave me the confidence in being very free in my investment because I don’t fear that the money’s not going to come back, or I’m not going to profit, or I’m not going to turn it into something because of that unwavering trust that it’s going to work out.”
“For nearly the first two years at USHA, everything I made went back into the business. That was partially a call of obedience because still being new in my recovery, I knew I needed to silence my ego. It was almost like a self-suffering strategy because I didn’t want to get rich quick because I didn’t trust I could handle it. And then two, just wanting to scale at the right pace and doing it the right way, were the two biggest decisions. But now, I definitely encourage any agent to at least make 50% reinvestment into your business, between assistance from your leaders, more marketing and all of the systems we use.”
Systems and processes. Not only in business, but in personal life as well. Frankie and his wife Andrea decided to create a family and have a daughter now.
“We actually have four children, three in heaven because of miscarriages,” says Frankie, “and we have our beautiful one-and-a-half year-old daughter, Veronica, who we call Ronnie. She is a light in our lives that’s for sure.”
To be a light is what Frankie says he wants to be for others, to show the way and to prove that anything is possible, despite your past.
“I would say life is a marathon, not a sprint,” says Frankie. “So when there’s a bump in the road, embrace it, accept it, and rely on the people around you to get past it. Find a way to get over that bump, or obstacle or even mountain, like I had to climb. Because on the other end of that is the race that you were given to run. I would say that is something that I’m speaking to myself and wish I learned at a much earlier point in life.”
“I feel like one of my biggest strongholds was the realization that things happen, but it’s the emotional reaction we have that’s irrational and then you totally lose sight of what the big picture is and what’s going on and what truly needs attention. That reactive state is what keeps us stuck right in front of that mountain which we potentially could climb, but never get over.”
Never get over that is, unless you’re like Frankie, and willing to change.
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
One Wheel Up - Susan Hamilton
Let’s face it everything that matters in life, work, love, even contribution, involves some type of risk, or you’re really not living.
No risk, no reward.
Susan Hamilton knows this concept and embraces it, much of her life has been about taking risks and crushing it.
Susan grew up on a large farm in Ohio, taking care of the animals and helping her family tend to what needed to be done. She’s traveled a long road from farming, to eventually marketing and selling data, but Susan could have never known that the black-and-white world of number crunching could lead to the colorful world of helping other people every day find the right health insurance with USHEALTH Advisors.
“I first met Jason Greif’s wife Kelly, (Jason is a Regional Leader for USHA), when she was working for American Marketing and Mailing Services, and they were a vendor of mine,” says Susan. “I was meeting with Chuck, the owner of the company and when the receptionist walked me back to his office he was just finishing up a conversation with Kelley and she and I kind of made eye contact. Chuck said, “Hey, I think you two girls should meet. He said, “Susan, Kelly’s husband works for a health insurance company that is interested in data. So Kelly and I circled back around, and then that’s eventually when I ended up at Jason’s office.”
“But when I got there, it was just wow, there were probably 40 agents all over the place and they were super busy. They all seemed to be very happy. Nobody looked unhappy. They were busy moving around a lot and very enthusiastic. And then I walked into Jason’s office I asked him, what do you guys do here again? And he says, “We sell insurance.” And I was like, what kind of insurance? And he said, “Health insurance.” “I laughed, are you sure you don’t sell drugs or something here, everyone looks so happy. And he says , “No, it’s private health insurance. It’s different.” “I’m like, okay, I’ve been in other health insurance offices and they don’t look like they’re having a good time. You guys are having a good time. So he said, “Well, why don’t you come and check it out?” “That’s when I went to the group interview and the whole concept was inspiring to me. Jason told everyone, “Listen, this isn’t just a job. JOB means Just Over Broke. This is a career that you’ll have to put your own time and money into,” he said. “It was so very inspiring. He said, “this is a career. And this should be your last career.”
“I didn’t know a whole lot about insurance, but with the training that was provided with USHA and in my Tampa division, it all made sense, it was excellent. I mean, we did two extensive weeks of training to really learn who our competitors are, what we would be selling and then pass our certifications.”
As Ralph Waldo Emerson states, do the thing and you’ll have the power. Susan, who was living with the challenge of being a single mom, but wanting to build a better life for her children, didn’t overthink things, she got to work. In a little more than four years, Susan has produced more than $5 .5 million in individual insurance sales and now serves as a Field Training Agent with USHEALTH Advisors, teaching others to do as she has done, work hard, accept and overcome the challenges, and move forward every day. No risk, no reward.
And Susan knows plenty about hard work, risk-taking, responsibility and discipline.
“I grew up in the country in Ohio pretty much far away from any kind of life,” says Susan. “Three-hundred acres of land and cows and barns and a very small school. I think every student that I went to school with was a cousin, or some type of relation,” she laughs. “It is a very, very small town.”
“I was a little sister, so I had two older brothers and my dad was very old-school. He always believed you treat the women of the house like they’re queens. But when I got a little bit older, I was more of a tomboy. I wanted to be outside with my dad wrenching on something or playing with the cows. I would feed the baby calves, so I’d have to mix up their feed and be out there early in the morning before school and make sure that the calves are getting their food, and clean up after them. We had pigs to help with too, and then it was off to school.”
“It was a lot of responsibility. I mean, if I wasn’t doing it, it wasn’t getting done. If I didn’t finish what I had started by the time I got home from school, even before homework, my dad would say, “Get out there and do your job. You didn’t finish your job today.” “And so it taught me, okay, let me finish my job when I’m supposed to finish it so I’m not punished. And like I said, if I wasn’t doing it, then nobody’s doing it.”
“We all had pretty serious jobs around the farm and my mom, she was the lady of the house. She didn’t go outside and do those things. So even if my dad wasn’t there when I would get home from school, she would tell me, “Hey, you didn’t finish the barn. You need to go out there and clean it now.” I’d say, “I’m tired. My mom didn’t care. “Well, you should have been up earlier and gotten it done,” she said. “So I feel like a lot of responsibility was learned very early on in life, which then helped me become a good parent. I feel like that’s why I am so successful in this career as well, because of the discipline.”
While disciplined with her chores around the farm, it was also on the farm that Susan learned she had a wilder side and it turned out it was one she wanted to explore.
“One thing about our farm, the barn was pretty far from the house, and when the feed truck would come to deliver the big feed bags, my dad would tell me to jump on the four wheeler and go have the guys unload them.”
“Well, with the weight on the back, I learned how to do wheelies on the four wheeler. And believe it or not, from that, I became a professional motorcycle stunt rider. So right around high school, I bought a motorcycle with my own savings I earned from working three jobs, but I hid the motorcycle from my parents, kept it parked at a friend’s house. I was so good that my brother’s buddies would come over to the farmhouse and be like, “Watch my sister, she’s crazy!”
“I ended up becoming this crazy motorcycle stunt rider. My dad finally found out about it though. One of his buddies was on the internet one day and saw a picture of me. I also had the bike painted pink. I wanted to make sure the guys knew that this little five-foot-four-inch girl was on a motorcycle riding wheelies on the streets. Amazingly enough, my dad embraced my motorcycle riding and he actually became a sponsor.”
But Susan didn’t just ride motorcycles for fun, she decided to go all out and go big time!
“I became the number one female stunt rider in the world for a pretty long while,” says Susan. “I was a stunt double for a few music videos like Cat Woman and Judgement Day and was also on set at Disney for The Extreme Stunt Show – Lights, Motors, Action!”
If taking big risks on two wheels, or one, wasn’t enough, Susan was also out front, promoting the motorcycle tour as a spokesperson.
“While I was also performing I became a spokesmodel for two big performance companies. And that kept me traveling all over the world. My dad was very proud of that. It’s funny, because earlier in my life my mom and dad sent me to John Casablanca School of Etiquette, so I could learn how to not be a tomboy. I probably chewed with my mouth open and I never wore makeup, didn’t care about how my hair looked. My mom would be like, are you going to comb your hair before you go outside today? And then that’s another thing that I realized in high school is I wanted to look the best. I knew that if I dressed up every single day, people treated me differently. So that’s what I started doing, and still do, dress to impress.”
“I used to fly all over the place as a spokesmodel. I traveled the International Motorcycle Show in the fall and winter and then spring and summer I would do the Stunt Riding Tours, all while going to college.”
“I retired as a motorcycle stunt rider in 2010, and did pursue a law career but only for about eight months because it was miserable. It was accident, injury, bankruptcy and divorce… and trying to do it all in a small town. I didn’t want to know my aunt and uncle were getting divorced. I didn’t want to know my best friend’s dad filed bankruptcy. So that’s when I had to suck it up and go to my dad and say, I know we paid a lot of money to go through college and I worked really hard, but I don’t want to do that. And he’s like, well, then what do you want to do? He’s like, you better get yourself into sales or marketing because you need to make money the way your lifestyle is!”
“And that’s what I did. I started working for the Auto Mart Magazine doing advertising and marketing and then owning my own data company, and that’s how I met Jason. And it was perfect timing again because the automotive industry was taking a very big turn in the digital world and I knew I had to jump ship before this thing crashes. So all that led me to USHA.”
It’s a 180 in a life and a career that once had Susan popping wheelies, (and even trying out as a junior olympian speed skater!), to now helping families navigate the road of sometimes confusing and overwhelming health insurance options. But what Susan says she learned through all of her life’s adventures is that she’s a people person and not only loves helping others, but also taking care of them after the sale as well. She believes what most successful people do – when you put others first, help them feel seen, heard and understood – that’s a great way to win in life.
“The big thing is paying attention to your clients and touching them. I send out an e-mail campaign at least once a month, and in the subject line I put important information from your insurance agent. It’s always some type of educational piece that helps my customer service a lot. I think when my clients get my emails, they know it’s going to be something educational. At the end of that message, it’s always asking for a referral. Let’s HOPE together, helping other people every day. And I make sure that they understand that is the mission.”
When HOPE is the heart of the matter, what matters then is everyone taking care of everyone else. It’s Susan caring for her clients and her clients caring right back with introductions to others who need her high level of hands-on customer service.
“Every single client that I sign up gets a personalized thank you card from me. Inside of that thank you card are two business cards, and then a little sticky note. And on the side it says, who do you know? It says, please send me three referrals this week, your neighbor, your brother or sister, your lawn maintenance person, or your plumber or realtor. And it kind of speaks that into existence. So then they’re like, “Oh yeah, I know somebody.”
“I’m just constantly in front of my clients with something that’s educational, and then every single dependent’s birthday, they get a personal birthday card from me with a little $5 donut card and it says, let me buy you a donut on the way to school tomorrow. Make sure you or your parent sends me a picture of you enjoying your donut. I get so many pictures of kids eating their donut and saying, thank you, Susie. Parents love their kids, so if you can send them a thank you note with a donut gift card in there, the parents are going to think, “Oh, I love my insurance agent.” “So just make sure you stay in front of your client and they work for you, but you have to ask them to work for you. You really have to ask. If you don’t say something, then you’re never asking for a referral and they just think, “okay, I got it. No problem.” “No, make them realize, this person, this agent, did something good for me. And they obviously thought you were very professional, so let’s share that together.”
Sharing is caring and now as a Field Training Agent, it’s Susan’s gift to share the USHA opportunity with other people and help them become as successful as she has been. She says she still learns from the best on her team and shares her knowledge with those trying to make their way here as well.
“I would say for the young entrepreneurs, just getting into this field, I wish I was 21 when I found this, the earlier you start, the better. And then for the mommies out there, it is discipline, extreme discipline. If you’ve been touched with this opportunity, you really need to embrace it and figure out the obstacles and get past those obstacles because then it just becomes an easy race.”
“The big thing is don’t get overwhelmed with the amount of time. If you can think of a track race, then the first half of the race has to be your sprint, then sprint, learn everything and make the first year, the hardest year of your life, get uncomfortable, work your butt off because you’re building a foundation and that foundation has to be super strong. I had an agent, Tom Johnson, he has seven kids and he became a top producer in his first year. So he had no excuses. Now granted, he has a very, very supportive wife, and the wife had to believe in it. So involve your spouses. Make them aware of what’s going on and communicate with them, bring them in, introduce them to your hierarchy so that they see they don’t have anything to worry about, and they might even join the career with you.”
Susan says her new life partner is in her corner as well, her fiancé, James “Andy” Cox. Susan says Andy has seen the value of the USHA opportunity as well and opened his own call center and is working to help support Susan and her insurance business.
But Susan says it’s her Regional Leader Jason Grief who has been supportive from day one and really taught her what discipline was really all about – making sure she understood early on that she had to put in the extra hours – and even as a mom, delegate some responsibilities to other people so she could spend more time working, helping more families get health insurance and build her career.
Speaking of family, Susan is a single mom to two children, 9-year-old Brennan and 16-year-old Kaylee. Susan she knows her kids understand the work she has to put in to create the success she wants to have and to share with them – and Susan says her kids say they are ready to follow in her footsteps, eventually becoming insurance agents as well, truly expanding her USHA family!
“When I first started four years ago, my son was about four-years-old, my daughter was a teen. And that’s when I decided that if I’m really going to go into this full force, I have to have my family support me. And so my mom would actually come down from Ohio to Florida every open enrollment season and take care of my kids. She spent a couple of months here. She was in the house making dinner, making breakfast, being there for them, taking them to school, picking them up from school, baseball practice you name it. It was a really big challenge at first. But now, it’s like being in a plane, once you finally take off you can put yourself on stealth mode and fly.”
As one of the top producers at USHEALTH Advisors, Susan is flying high now. She went from the farm to the big city, with many stops and plenty of stunts in between, taking risks, taking chances and showing what she’s tougher than any obstacle. To be one of the best, you’ve got to stand out from the crowd.
As Susan has shown everyone, why ride on two wheels in life when you can take a chance, make a big impression and live life on the edge, going one wheel up!
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
Do The Most - Brandon Knickerbocker
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
Let’s paraphrase the quote from the great Thoreau and state the obvious, the most successful among us live life to the beat of a different drum.
Or maybe they simply play one, like Brandon Knickerbocker.
“My father bought me a drum set when I was five years old,” says Brandon. “And he told me, “Well, it’d be something cool for you to do.” My parents started me with drum lessons right away. I don’t know, I just always thought it was pretty cool. It was a cool hobby and it definitely kind of widened my brain to just become more musically inclined. I think I read a paper once somewhere and it said that students who play an instrument, or enrolled in some sort of music program also do better in school, because music, reading the music, that sheet paper is also like learning another language. So it helps your mind and your brain to communicate easier, especially if you’re learning an instrument or another language. That’s kind of what started me on that path.”
Walking a different path, living life to the beat of a different drum, eventually brought Brandon to the doors of USHEALTH Advisors. USHA is a place where anyone who is eager to listen to the music of their heart, work hard and serve others can create a career and a life filled with freedom and choices.
From the moment he got his health and life license, Brandon banged the drum hard at USHA in the Nasvhville office. Brandon issued nearly $700,000 in business in his first 13 weeks with the company, then went above and beyond that mark in his second 13 weeks, issuing more than $900,000. That’s $1.6 million in insurance policies in only half-a-year. Since that time in 2020, Brandon has issued $7.5 million in insurance sales, one application at a time, placing him among the elite at USHEALTH Advisors.
Of course it was all an overnight success, right? As we all know, that’s a myth. Though it’s easy for people to believe there are tricks and not-so-subtle secrets involved when anyone makes a big splash.
“I’m sure everyone hated me,” says Brandon. “In fact, a lot of people did hate me. I knew it because they were like, who is this guy coming in here, when everyone else is at maybe at 35,000 average AV each week, and I come in and write 30K, then 60K, then 80K, then 90K and so on. Everyone starts looking at you funny and asking, “What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you cheating? You’re cheating. You must be cheating. You’re getting these special leads, you’re writing fake business.” That’s what everyone thought and they hated me.”
“There were all these rumors about me – that I lived in the Silicon Valley, (Brandon grew up in California), and my parents are rich, and then I’m spending $10,000 a week on leads, though I wasn’t making a lot of money yet, or I wrote policies on my dad’s business, all these different things and crazy stories. People would record me on my pitch and try to get me in trouble and different things. So it was really weird. There was just a lot of attention, I didn’t really care because I was hitting all my milestones, and then I started making a good living.”
But let’s go back to the beginning here, before we talk about what made Brandon successful, it pays to pay attention to how he got here, which wasn’t by chance, but instead by taking a huge chance and never looking back.
“I’d say my biggest accomplishment in my short time of being here at USHA is just taking that leap of faith,” says Brandon, “moving my whole world and leaving everything that I’ve known and grown up with and been with for 22 years, just kind of leaving all of it with only $1,200 in my bank account and just knowing that this is it and I can do it. The leap of faith just really was quite something… I just dropped everything and people. I was living in California, where I grew up and when I told my parents what I was going to do they said, “We’re going to cut you off. We’re not giving you any more money.” I said, “Whatever. I’m doing it.” Then my leader, my field training agent at the time was like, “There’s going to be weeks where you’re blank and when you don’t do too well.” I just said, “No, there isn’t. I’m never going to blank.”
“Then I kind of really just put everything into it. I knew that I had the belief in myself and kind of it was almost like my magnum opus and all my life experiences, everything I’ve ever learned, I saw that I could just really paint this picture and be the artist of the sale, I guess. Absolutely my biggest accomplishment would be having such a belief in myself to go into an industry that I know nothing about coming just from food sales or being a musician.”
It’s been said music is life and before coming to USHEALTH Advisors music was Brandon’s life – he was part of a group, a band he and some friends created almost a decade prior.
“I knew this kid from fourth grade and he played guitar. I think he came over to jam once, and then in seventh grade, they said, “Hey, we know you play drums.” Everyone plays guitar and bass or maybe sings, but not a whole lot of drummers out there. We’re starting a band. What would you think about playing drums for us?” So I said, “Okay, yeah, let’s do it.”
“I think by 16 years old, we had our first album and it was pretty cool because we didn’t realize how much money we’d had to spend in the studio. We had some amateur home recordings, but we went to a real studio. We spent like $4,000, $5,000. Of course back then that was a lot of money to us. We released it and it did pretty well, and we had some fans and we played all the local bars in Costa Mesa, Newport, Garden Grove, Anaheim, and eventually we made our way to Los Angeles.”
“Then as we got out of high school, the tours kept getting longer with more legs. We flew to Connecticut, and Rhode Island and played Brooklyn, Bushwick, Manhattan, everywhere, all the way down to Florida. We got to visit and play so many places and all these experiences in my late teens and early 20s.”
“So the experience definitely got me more on the independent track, a kind of I’m thinking for myself mindset. But then while we were on tour this one girl gave me a book and it was a Buddhist book, Siddhartha, by Herman Jesse. I was never quite a reader, but she gave it to me and I read it and it said you have to think for yourself and thoughts are things. I was like, “You’re so right.” “I’ve been in this band since I was in seventh grade, and I’ve never really been able to think for myself because we kind of had to dress a certain way, act a certain way, be politically correct, all these different things that I couldn’t be myself.”
One idea can change a life and you never know when or where you might learn or discover the opportunity to change, but the book inspired Brandon to go deep in thought about the journey of his life thus far and what he wanted.
“I didn’t realize that until I read that book,” says Brandon. “And I thought to myself, “You know what, I found more reasons than one, wanting to get wealthy. The band wasn’t it.” So I finally decided I was leaving the band. I need to start my life.” So I did. Then that’s kind of what set me on this journey of I guess just being self-employed and thinking for myself and just doing it my way, not somebody else’s way or not the paved way.”
“I didn’t know what I was going to do next. So I started training for a marathon and I was running 10, 11, and 12 miles every other day, waking up at 5 AM with my weight vest and going on 15 mile hikes. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’d always put on an audiobook or podcast, things like that. Probably all these things helped and inspired me. I guess I never thought about it this way, that’s why I do interviews and speak about it because you don’t reflect like you do when you’re saying it out loud. So yeah, I guess I was looking for some sort of purpose. I said, “Well, I might as well just get really fit and train my body so I could train my mind.”
Putting his mind to the test, thinking bigger and outside the box was something Brandon’s parents, especially his father, found tough to wrap his head around.
“My dad just wanted me to do the safe route,” says Brandon. “He was thinking that I’d done a million different things. I applied to Cal State Fullerton right before I left and I got denied. They denied me and I figured, “Well, I don’t want to go through another six months of community college before reapplying.” So that’s maybe something else I was running from. I just wanted to start my life. I just wanted to do something before it was too late. I guess I probably just wanted to get out of the house too. I didn’t want to run another X amount of miles in six months and do all these different things. Being in that bubble of Newport Beach, Orange County was definitely a little stagnant. I think maybe the longer I stayed there, the less likely I would be to leave.”
Sometimes getting outside the bubble is the answer to a bigger, better existence and Brandon was ready to not only leave the bubble but to extend his life thousands of miles away, all because he heard there might be a better way.
As it turns out the older brother of one of Brandon’s best friends had joined USHEALTH Advisors – and soon enough Brandon’s buddy was on board with USHA as well. Brandon heard about their success and decided to take the leap of faith and make the move from Orange County, California to Nashville, Tennessee. The kid who loved music was leaving the band behind, to go solo and try to conduct his symphony of success in Music City.
“It was just an opportunity to move across the U.S., says Brandon, “to be with one of my best friends and I just saw the opportunity and took it just because the 1099 aspect of everything really spoke to me. You are in control of your destiny, how much you’re getting paid, and what you do daily, not being another statistic in the nine-to-five salary-based corporate world. I like that. I like that the harder you work, the more you’re rewarded, with really no ceiling.”
While there was no ceiling, Brandon, like so many who seem to make it at USHA, didn’t have much of a base to begin with either – which brings us back to how others perceived Brandon’s early success, it wasn’t luck, it came down to three words – Brandon was hungry.
“So I came here with $1,200 and I was living on my friend’s couch,” says Brandon. “I was sleeping on his couch, on an inflatable mattress. It was very uncomfortable and I absolutely hated it. I took my insurance test in California, health and life, and failed both of them, but I was already moving out to Nashville, so it was too late to change my mind.”
“I came out to the Nashville office anyway and worked as an appointment setter. I screened three sales in my first week being a screener, not licensed, just setting the appointment. Then the second week I screened another two sales, but they wanted to get me going. So that second week I studied for my licensing tests, passed both of them, and then I was off and running. By Friday of my third week when I got my license, I was out of money, the $1,200 I came with was gone, but I had three credit cards that I made sure to pay off before I moved here.”
So I had three credit cards, and in my first week, I maxed out one. It was like $2,500 on a health insurance lead source. Other people at the time, they were investing maybe $200 to $500 a week into their business. But I decided to max out at $2,500. I was like, “Let’s do it. More leads, more sales, more people to talk to. I’m going to overwhelm myself because I know that’s what I need to do to exponentially increase and just blast off.” I think I know what I’m doing well enough. I’m one of those people that when I hear it once, or read it once, or do it once, or see it done once, I’ve pretty much got it down.”
So for the skeptics who thought Brandon had some secret sauce to his super-fast start, it was nothing more than a choice, it always comes down to a choice to a decision, to taking action. For Brandon it was the choice to go all in, with his wallet and his focus, choosing to believe it before he could even see it. And he did one more thing… Brandon listened, intently, investing in knowledge and copying the best of the best.
“My leaders said that I was the biggest bugger,” says Brandon. “I would go up to them every ten seconds and ask them a new question. But once I asked the question, I didn’t have to ask it again. I kind of just built off it. So I was able to blast off because I’d already asked all the questions. I knew before I got my first insurance application what to say and what to do because I’d hear people pitching and I’d done the practice pitch before actually talking to clients. I knew that whatever a client asked me, whatever they asked me, I had an answer to it. I had a rebuttal.”
Through pure tenacity and hard work Brandon has built himself into one of the top producers at USHA and now serves others as well as a Field Training Agent. So what’s Brandon’s advice for those just starting out in this field?
“I’d just say the first couple things you do is just know the product and be confident in it and ask yourself all the questions that a buyer does. If you were buying the product, what would you want to know about it? If you were buying something, what questions would you ask? I did that. I kind of just really internally reflect on the delivery of the presentation and how it sounds. You have to know who you’re speaking with and know your audience. One thing I pride myself on is I feel like I can put myself in other people’s shoes and maybe that’s what makes me such a good salesman because I can kind of shift my perspective and shift my perception on certain things.”
“That’s number one and the most important, but then to get to the next level, it’s to overwhelm yourself. You can’t do well here if you can’t ever push yourself if you don’t overwhelm yourself. I don’t even have an assistant, a lot of the other top producers do, but I feel like I can still work harder. I’m not at the point where I want an assistant yet, because frankly, if I got an assistant, I think I’d get lazy and complacent. After all, that’s what keeps me on top of everything. Because I always know that I can do better, I know that I can be better.”
There’s a philosophy of life that says to be the best and to leave your legacy you must do all that you can with all you have been given. For Brandon, it’s that philosophy and a little bit more.
“You have to do the most,” he says. “Always do the most.”
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky