“The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bull**** story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.” ― Jordan Belfort
Jordan Belfort may have said these words, but Jesse Fabricant is living the reality. He wants to be number one. He’s got a goal and he’s not letting anything get in the way.
“Even when I was young I looked at people doing well and the lifestyle I wanted and I said, I’m going to do whatever I have to do to get there. I have a very determined personality. If there’s something I want I will do whatever it takes.”
What Jesse wants is to be the number one personal producing agent in his full rookie year at USHEALTH Advisors. At 28, Jesse has done this kind of thing before in different industries, but always with the same tenacity and the same drive and with the same mentality, he learned earlier in life… just pick up the phone.
Most salespeople don’t want to make a ton of phone calls, especially cold calls, but Jesse knows it’s the phone that gave him a new lease on life and probably helped save his family as well. Jesse’s greatest accomplishment and his greatest challenge are rolled into one thing, beating the odds and realizing health is wealth.
“The man with great health has a thousand wishes. The man without good health has only one.”
Jesse was only 12-years-old, in 8th grade, when one day he didn’t feel so well. “I had an issue one day at school,” says Jesse. “I went home early, ended up going to the doctor, they did a bunch of tests and the treatments started right away.” The treatments were for the condition diagnosed as ulcerative colitis, a chronic disease of the large intestine. The disease kept Jesse mostly confined to his home, robbing him of the joy and freedom of much of his teenage years.
“I was homeschooled and the condition got really bad,” says Jesse. “I ended up needing emergency surgery. I was pretty sick for about five years. I had my entire colon, everything removed. I was in the hospital for about a month. I had an ostomy bag for about three months and then another surgery to reverse that when I was 17. During part of that illness, there was a period I literally couldn’t leave my house for a year straight. I was on 40-pills-a-day for about three-to-four years.”
A few years into his health struggles, suddenly, his family started struggling financially as well. It was a blessing in disguise because it gave Jesse the spark to turn things around, especially his mindset.
“My dad always did well in his work,” says Jesse. “He owned part of a steel fabrication company and was making good money, but when the economy took a hit in 2007 and 2008, I suddenly saw my father and my family in financial trouble. My dad had to refinance the house and sold a bunch of things when the economy went south. I felt helpless because I couldn’t leave the house to help him, to go out and make money to help the family survive.”
But confined to his home, there was one thing Jesse could do to pitch in, which was to pick up the phone. “My dad set me up to make phone calls, sales calls and cold calls in his steel fabrication business,” says Jesse. “I was about 15-years-old and had never cold-called anyone before. But I did pretty well and it taught me a lot about how to make calls and how to speak to people.”
The activity gave Jesse a reason to not just feel sick every day and the motivation to not face the same hardship his dad did at the time. “I was home a lot growing up,” says Jesse. “When the economy took a bad turn I watched my dad have to change his whole life. I saw him coming home every day struggling, not doing well. I told myself I don’t ever want to be in that position, or have anyone I love be in that position. I don’t want to live like that.”
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
After his second surgery at age 17, Jesse was able to enter the workforce doing different sales jobs. He did very well at everything he set his mind to and the same time he was rebuilding his body, which had been ravaged by illness. He took the time to focus on his passion: health, exercise, and nutrition.
Jesse’s love for fitness drove him to invest in a gym in North Carolina. He used the money he had saved through his many sales jobs, but Jesse soon learned the gym was a bad business deal and when it started to fail, he ended up losing the $30,000 he poured into it.
It was a tough time for a pretty tough guy.
“I thought that was it,” says Jesse. “I gave up for a time. I thought that gym was my dream, it was what I wanted to do and since it didn’t work I’d just go back home, bag groceries at Publix and do whatever. I felt it was too late to use my college degree, I was already 28 years old.”
But during the time Jesse was struggling with his fitness business, his good friend Jason Blank started reaching out to him about this opportunity Jason had found. “Jason would text me from time to time and say, ‘I got this gig in Orlando and it’s really good money,’ says Jesse. “And Jason would send me pictures of his paychecks. When he first reached out to me I just thought whatever he was doing it was not going to last. It was probably shady, but every month he would follow-up with more pictures of his checks and stories of his success. He knew I was struggling.”
After the gym went under, Jesse finally decided to join Jason and that meant putting everything on the line. “I left the gym and packed everything I owned into my car,” says Jesse. “I made the ten-hour drive from North Carolina to Orlando, Florida. Jason had a blow-up mattress in his living room. That’s where I slept. I got on the phone the next day and started making calls.”
Jason Blank was working with USHEALTH Advisors and now Jesse was too. Jesse’s first full week of business, selling on his own, was the end of September 2017 and since that time Jesse has never looked back. He is on a tear, poised to break the company record for sales and finish as the #1 personal producer in the company, a company focused on offering affordable health coverage and benefits to the self-employed.
“Jason saved me,” says Jesse. “He’s the guy that got me in it, got me going. I don’t know what I would do without him. I still live with him. He wakes me up every morning. He pushes me to go to the gym late at night after work, or in the early AM hours.”
Yes, the workouts now take place around midnight or later. That’s because to be number one, you have to do the one thing during the day and night most salespeople are unwilling, or unable to do, work until it hurts.
Jesse says a typical work week flows like this: “During the week I’m up at 7-am and dialing by 8-am. I leave the office sometime in between 11-pm and midnight. I’m basically calling leads on the Vanilla Soft Dialer until I can’t anymore, sometimes nearly falling asleep at my desk. On the weekends I go in a little bit later, but I still work until I put in business and usually don’t leave earlier than 10:30-pm. I spend so much time in my cube there’s a running joke around the office that I’m C4Life – Cube For Life. I rarely leave the cube.”
It’s an intense time, so intense that when Jesse needed a haircut recently he got creative. Instead of taking the time to get out and get a haircut, Jesse asked one of his other agents who used to cut hair, to grab his scissors and do it right in the cube, so Jesse wouldn’t miss any phone calls. That’s what you call dedication:
“I’m trying to make this year the year,” says Jesse. “There may never be another opportunity to put in the time like I can now and solidify my future with the company. I’ve put everything else in my life on hold for right now. I wake up thinking about work and go to bed thinking about it. I’m consumed with it right now. I have a goal.”
What also helps tremendously is what Jesse calls his “rock”, his wife Jaimie. The two have known each other since they were 12. Jesse says Jaimie was there by his side during his long illness, even lying in his hospital bed with him and helping to care for him. The couple married a little more than a year ago. They are not physically together right now because Jaimie is going to medical school and doing her residency in Miami. But Jesse says his opportunity with USHA has already enabled him to help his wife pay off school loans and ease their financial burden.
“This opportunity has changed my life, my wife’s life, my parent’s life, (Jesse’s mom even helps him in the business). I didn’t know anything like this existed. You come in here, you work, you help people and you make as much money as you want to make. It’s up to you. The structure of the company is something everyone should experience. I was looking for something like this forever, it’s the opportunity I always wanted. I’ll never forget after my second surgery, on my 18th birthday I told myself I will be a millionaire by age 30. I have to be a millionaire by 30.”
“The easiest thing I ever did in my life was to earn a million dollars, the hardest thing I ever did was to believe it could happen to me.” – Les Brown
It appears Jesse is on his way.
It’s a long way from colitis to the culture Jesse is experiencing at USHEALTH Advisors and the comfort he is creating for his family. And although he is feeling better and the surgeries have solved much of his issues, Jesse says he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t sick. He still has health challenges and has to watch his stress level, but for the most part, life is as it should be, things are going right. In fact, the right things are what Jesse said his dad preached to him for as long as Jesse can remember.
“The saying I grew up with, every time I left the house for anything – to go to school, to go to a party, to go to work – my dad would always look at me and say, ‘do the right thing‘. He still says that to me each time I see him. He says you can grow up and have the odds against you, but if you do the right thing you can have what you want.”
Jesse says what he wants is to make an impact. “I’m going to work and do whatever I have to do to be successful for myself, for my wife, my parents, and my sister,” says Jesse. “I want people to say Jesse came from an adverse situation and did what he said he was going to do and helped the people who are close to him as much as he helped himself.”
For Jesse, that means doing the right thing along his way.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
