Hungry
Everyone you will ever meet is going through something… that’s why they call it life. Life is a beautiful challenge, but if you’re willing to share your story then your struggles are gifts the world will fall in love with. Your scars teach us lessons we can use to navigate our own lives.
Bailey Broyles’ wounds occurred early in his life, but now they’re guideposts that have shaped the man he is – and the impact he is making at USHEALTH Advisors. Since March of 2023 Bailey has issued more than $2 million in individual insurance policies. As of the writing of this story, that’s only 15 months time! Bailey comes to USHA as most do, without any prior insurance experience, but it’s the road he’s traveled that makes him resilient in whatever he decides to chase.
“I was raised by my grandparents because at a young age my dad died,” says Bailey. “He was in a motorcycle accident. I lost him when I was only a year old and then I was raised by my mom for a little bit, but she got caught up in drugs and was sent away. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when that happened. I think it was right before grade school, so I was still pretty young. But my grandparents took me in and they pretty much raised me my whole life. So I mean, I guess that’s kind of affected me. I don’t really like to say it does… but it does.”
Of course it does. That’s life. We are all shaped by our experiences. We can’t escape our past, but if we embrace it as something that happened for us and not to us, we can move forward with an abundance of faith, fortitude, and an intrinsic fire for life. Bailey’s upbringing, having his grandparents suddenly become his parents, has been a catalyst for his strong will and determination.
“So the more I think about it, that’s really a big one,” admits Bailey. “As far as growing up with them, it’s a huge difference than a lot of the parents that my friends had because we didn’t really do any of the cool stuff. But there was always good support from my grandparents, because I still played sports and did those kinds of things, especially baseball. I couldn’t really practice with my grandpa. But he still went and watched and supported me. So did my grandma.”
“My grandpa is also a really successful businessman. He builds houses, he does real estate and he develops land. He was a firefighter for most of my childhood. Then he decided he could make more money if he built houses. So he started doing that as his career.”
“My grandpa is super, super work oriented for sure. I guess that’s how I am now. I didn’t have a lot of time with my grandpa outside of work. But I worked for him when I was in high school and before I got into college. And he is work, work, work. He’s stern and can be a stubborn man. But it’s a good thing when it comes to business because people respect him. And I feel like I’ve taken after him in a lot of ways and that’s helped me do a lot of good things here at USHA, especially conducting myself as a business person. When I talk to people, they respect me when I speak. So that’s been good for sure. And my grandma, she stayed at home a lot, so I got a lot of one-on-one time with her. She may be a little bit older, but she acts like she’s 30 for sure. So that has made the age gap feel a bit a little smaller. My grandma is all over Facebook. I mean, she’s 76, but she’s on it more than I am. She knows how to work that stuff better than anyone I know. It’s pretty impressive,” laughs Bailey.
Bailey’s experience of being guided by his elders has also led him to another “trick of the trade” – showing respect for and being respected by those twice his age. Bailey is only 27.
“Being raised by my grandparents has helped me,” says Bailey, “especially in business when I talk to people, they respect me when I speak. So that’s been good for sure. Also with how I view work. Nowadays I feel like a lot of people don’t want to work hard and that’s baffling to me. I mean you have to work hard to get anywhere. So my experience has definitely taught me to work harder.”
Like many who come to USHEALTH Advisors, Bailey’s path to get here has been uneven at best. Though he’s now helping and serving with health insurance, there was a time Bailey was going to be an MD… until he wasn’t.
“I was pretty much dead set on being a doctor for some reason,” says Bailey. “I think my grandparents wanted that for me. I didn’t really want it so much, but they wanted it. And I got deep into all the sciences and stuff. I studied all of that. I loved it, but I hated numbers. So I guess it made sense for me to go the science route. I got into the University of Texas and I was about to go to UT Southwestern after I graduated, but right before I started medical school classes I randomly dropped out. I told my grandparents, “Hey, I can’t do this.” They weren’t happy, but I had to make a choice.”
With his former aspirations in the medical field in his rear-view mirror, Bailey went looking for something else. He found a job selling solar. And while on the outside looking in it seemed bright and sunny, once Bailey started his career there, the experience turned dark.
“I didn’t have a job, says Bailey. “And I didn’t have any sort of education that I wanted to use for my future. So I got into selling solar, which is what I was doing for before I came to USHA. It was really good for a while. I mean, solar was popping. It was like the trendy thing. Everyone was into it. And then all of a sudden I went to work with a different company with one of my friends. He made some big promises, really good things. It looked good on paper so I trusted him and went over there and I was building, recruiting, training new guys on how to door knock, how to sell solar, but without getting paid, it was pretty much only the promise of getting paid.”
“When I first got going there, I was getting really big checks. But I my friend was trying to entice me to come over to the company and I guess I came to realize he was just paying me whatever he was getting for the solar. So once I got into the position of leadership with that company, I was there for maybe eight to ten months with no pay at all. And I was working way more hours than I do here at USHA, which is hard to believe, because here I work from about from 7:30 am to about 10 pm every night. So I was working more hours doing solar, but I ran out of money pretty quickly. I couldn’t afford rent, couldn’t afford my car, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was about two weeks from being homeless. And then on a whim, I texted one of my friends from college.”
“I said, “Hey, who is that guy you told me about who was doing a pretty good job in insurance?” I need an opportunity. And so I just showed up here on a Tuesday, I think it was. I was late so I didn’t get to see the full pitch of course. And so Pay Afshari, who was a Field Sales Leader at the time, pulled me aside and he was straightforward with me and talked about what it would take. Pay said, “Do you think you can do this or not?” And I was like, “Absolutely, I can sell. I can do whatever. I need a job.” He explained to me you’re going to have to be here at this time, and you’re going to have to work your butt off. You’re going to have to dial and you’re really going to have to grind. I said, “That’s what I need to do. Absolutely. Let me do this.”
Many times the toughest part of success is to simply begin. With a sense of urgency and the prospect of homelessness looming, Bailey had all the incentive he needed. In need of health insurance, Bailey got to work immediately. But after writing a health policy on himself, Bailey struggled to help others, needing to learn more about the products and the process.
“I guess at the beginning I was having a hard time understanding how to really do this, to properly explain the plans,” says Bailey. “In solar you have to really push people, you’ve got to sell ’em hard. And here you don’t have to do that. People don’t respond to that stuff here, it’s much more of a consultation, explaining, describing it, just showing people their options. And then they pretty much choose for themselves. People don’t choose solar for themselves, ever. So that was a little hard for me to get used to because I was being kind of pushy on the phone. So I had to dial it back and I just shadowed my leaders and other agents a lot until I could understand how to use my own confidence. Now I’m really good on the phone.”
“It took me a little bit of time to understand all of this. And of course when it comes to prospecting and dialing leads and everything, I was used to having people door knock for me in solar, like appointment setters and I would go in there and close it. So I had to really learn to prospect a little bit better. I was struggling with that one for sure. But I turned that around pretty quickly. It is not a tough thing to learn, just have to understand where to put the energy and the effort and how to do it systematically and be consistent with it.”
Hard work works, as does the word that drives success and keeps it going… consistency.
And so with the work ethic and the work effort… how does Bailey find time to unwind? Like so many do, he uses music to help soothe the savage soul.
“I play guitar,” says Bailey. “I workout, I lift weights. I don’t do that much stuff for fun. But I love to work, I think work’s fun, honestly. That’s what I do most of the time. It has to be fun.”
If you love what you do, it’s not work… but it also helps if you have someone you love and who loves you, to help get you through the tough days. For Bailey, that’s Ashlee.
“I’ve got my girlfriend, soon-to-be fiance, Ashlee,” says Bailey. She works with me. I contribute a lot of my success to her as well. She is phenomenal. And believe me, there are days I’ll get down a little bit. I’ll get kind of into a trance where I’m not pushing, I’m not as hungry as I should be and she kicks my ass, tells me to get going again. Ashlee is good at that, for sure.”
As most successful people do, Bailey says he can reach inside himself as well to find the next gear, to get that something extra he needs to take his life to the next level. After all, if you put the extra in front of the word ordinary, you get extraordinary. It takes focus, time, and effort.
“I have a lot of internal motivation,” says Bailey. “I want to better myself all the time. Every week I look at my numbers and I want to do better. I look at where I’m slacking, where I can be more efficient. I can be super unorganized, but that’s where Ashlee helps me again. I need help with that and mastering it and getting a little better about where I’m spending my time and energy and effort – it’s an everyday challenge. But the motivation part is really more about discipline. That’s where I don’t think you need motivation. I think you need discipline, you know what I mean? I feel like when people look for motivation, figure out how to find it internally and then just understand what you need to do there to get where you want to go and then do it every day. That’s discipline. And if you’re not doing it every day, figure out why – correct it – and then do it every day.”
So what does a day in the life of Bailey Broyles look like? He’ll admit it’s a little like Groundhog Day, the same routine, on repeat.
“So typically what I do is I will wake up around 5:30 am,” says Bailey. “I’ll go lift at the gym and then be in the office around 7:30 am or so, and then everyone’s here dialing no later than eight o’clock. We’ll do that until about 11 or 12. Then we usually have a training. Then we do some one-on-ones with the team and we take a little bit of a break and then back on the phones by 4 pm or so until eight or nine o’clock. That’s just a daily thing. I try to do a lot of trainings with my team, focusing a lot on tonality and how you sound on the phone, especially in that first 15 seconds, because without that, if you sound like everyone else, you’re getting hung up on. If you can really master that skill then it helps turn a new agent into a very productive one. But aside from that, it’s just dial, train, break, dial, that’s really it.”
Bailey’s early success at USHEALTH Advisors has also fueled his vision for what’s possible here and with his life. Bailey’s ultimate goal is to break new ground, turn conventionality on its ear, and think a little crazy. After all, the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
“I want to do things that people haven’t done here,” says Bailey. “I want to make a new path. I know that’s tough to say because reinventing the wheel, that’s something people don’t really do, and you don’t have to do it here, nor should you do it to get going. But, moving forward, that’s what I want to do. I want to reinvent something and do bigger and better things that haven’t even happened here yet. I’m a long way from it, but that’s my end goal.”
The ones who see things differently with a grand vision are the ones who move the human race forward. And it all begins with one intrinsic motivation… be hungry.
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
