“I’m just going to show up every day, every week, every month, every hour, every day. No matter what it is, no matter what the excuse is, no matter what the reason is, I’m just going to keep showing up.” – Austin (AJ) Baker
You could start and end this story right there. Showing up matters, big time. Especially if you want to be BIG TIME.
AJ Baker is one of the most successful team leaders and builders at USHEALTH Advisors, recently being promoted to serve as a Regional Sales Leader for the company. His numbers prove he’s showing up time and time again. AJ’s teams have amassed more than $442 million in issued business, (yes, $442 million), at USHA and AJ himself is closing in on $3 million in personal production.
But there’s way more to that story.
“Over and above the millions and millions in production numbers my teams have put up” says AJ, “I’m most proud of being the #1 Division Sales Leader Builder for three consecutive years, 2022, 2023, and 2024, and now getting on track to be the #1 Regional Sales Leader Builder at USHA.
So why show up? Usually, our beginnings dictate our future actions, good or bad. Hopefully, over time in our lives, we gravitate to the good things and learn lessons from the things that didn’t go so well. AJ reflects on how his childhood shaped his outlook on life. At the end of the day, and at the end of all of our days, life should come down to one thing: Love.
That means having others show up for you and you for them.
“My parents divorced when I was pretty young,” says AJ, “I think I was two or three years old. So, I was used to that being with my mom a good deal, my dad every other weekend. My mom worked a lot, so I lived with my grandparents for a little while and my mom, but whether it was in an apartment, or with my grandparents in a mobile trailer for a little while, it all worked out. As I was growing up, even though my parents split up and were working a ton, and even if I was living in a small apartment or living with my grandparents, or whatever, there was always an abundance of love from both my parents and my grandparents. It was so amazing and unconditional and I really appreciate that in my life.”
Especially when it comes to love, what goes around, comes around and at USHEALTH Advisors, AJ Baker is showing up and sharing the love every single day.
He’s sharing what he calls his gift.
“I think my gift is probably the ability to connect with a wide variety and diverse group of people,” says AJ. “And I don’t know what it’s called, but I find it easy to connect with people that are everywhere, whether it’s super successful people, or not as successful, in business or personally, male or female. I think I’ve always had this ability to really connect with everyone. I treat everyone with respect and care and I can meet them where they are. I believe it’s why I’ve had the privilege to have a lot of long relationships with different people throughout my life.”
“I’m honored to say not a lot of people want to leave a team that I’ve had the privilege of leading, it just doesn’t happen much. And again, I think it’s just my ability to connect and to care and help them put other people before yourself and do the right thing from a character standpoint. Don’t let your position of power influence you because someone’s coming to you for advice, or coming to you for insight, or they’re in a bad spot. Never use that against them, never hold that against them and never take advantage of it. Look to continue bettering people and better their situations. There’s a rule I have and my parents know it and my Senior Regional Leader Jason Greif knows it, everyone around me knows it… I don’t talk about people behind their backs and they know that I don’t like to hear it around me, even as a joke. People can’t even trick me into it. I just don’t do it.”
“I don’t like sharing other people’s stuff. I like meeting people where they are. I like connecting with people and understanding and truly looking out for them and trying to help them. I think that’s probably one of my biggest skill sets, having good character. Then there are two others: consistency and coachability.”
AJ refers to these as the three C’s. They are as important in his life as anything, whether it’s business, or personal. The three C’s matter, and they help AJ to prove that he matters.
“What I talk about a lot to people is about consistency, coachability and character,” says AJ. “Those really are the three C’s that I like to focus on in life, and I think it’s really, really tough to do that. At least I find it to be very challenging because I want to try and be the greatest of all time in this business, and I want to try and be the greatest father of all time and the greatest husband of all time. So it’s definitely a challenge.”
It’s obvious, listening to AJ share a good deal about his life, he not only wants to be a baller in business, but also be the bedrock of his family at home, with his wife Ashley, and his son, Wyatt and his soon-to-be-born daughter, Ava (in fact of the writing of this story Ava’s birth is just days away.)
Family matters. In fact, AJ says it tops his life list of things he’s most proud of. Considering how successful he’s been in business, and how much he loves to work, that’s saying something.
“My greatest accomplishment is being a father,” say AJ. “I’m a relatively new father. I have my son, Wyatt John Baker, and he is getting ready to turn two this April. And then also my daughter Ava Jaymes. We’re calling her little AJ. These are relatively newer things for me so I would absolutely have to say as my greatest accomplishment, I found a level of love that I didn’t know existed and a level of care that I didn’t know existed. I waited to have children. I’m 36 right now, so I had my first child at 34 and now, Ava at age 36. So I waited a little bit, but it’s everything for me.”
“It’s also my greatest challenge, honestly, trying to be extremely successful in this business, as an entrepreneur that wants to grow a team and invest so much time and energy and effort and resources to help my team to be themselves and to hone their craft. At the same time, try and maintain being a great father and a great spouse and a great child to my parents and a great sibling to my step brothers and sisters. I think that balancing act alone, if you want to accomplish extraordinary things and still be great at all of those things, for me it is a challenge. It weighs on you. It takes a toll. It does take a lot, a lot of thought and a lot of reflecting and a lot of patience and a lot of discipline and a lot of consistency, coachability and character.”
The middle of the three C’s, coachability, is a lesson AJ had to learn the hard way. While being an entrepreneur was literally in his blood – both his mom, dad, and grandfather have been entrepreneurs for most of their lives – in fact, AJ helped his mom with several of her businesses, sometimes even blood needs a little guidance to find its way to the heart of the matter.
That heart is discipline. And a teacher to tell it to you straight.
AJ first joined USHEALTH Advisors in 2016, being introduced to the opportunity by his dad’s friend, Paul Rishty, when his dad, Paul and AJ played golf together. When AJ finally contracted in the fall of 2016, he was able to experience the full gusto of the health insurance open enrollment period during the last two months of that year. AJ worked hard during that period and had great success. “My back was truly up against the wall,” says AJ. “I had moved in with my then girlfriend, Ashley, and her dog and I planned to come in to USHA knowing that open enrollment was right around the corner, and that was a good time for this industry. And then I ended up, I think issuing almost $150,000 in annual volume in my first 13 weeks.”
But as the new year 2017 rolled in, AJ started rolling out. He figured he knew enough now to take it a little easy.
“The wheels kind of fell off in February for me when I started to get lazy,” says AJ. “I started to think I can come in the office later and leave earlier, and I have more skill sets so I can work less and achieve the same results, because I had just earned probably half of what I had made in the prior year, in only four months. So I was rich, or I thought I was rich. And then I started playing golf, a lot. I started leaving the office early, started not working weekends, not putting in the time, blaming my leaders, blaming the leads, complaining, not coming in. And I did that for probably February, March, April, and May. And the whole time Paul Rishty is calling me trying to get me back in the office.”
The phone calls weren’t enough to get AJ to get back in the office full-time, but then AJ got an invitation he couldn’t refuse, because he had no other choice.
“I get an email and a scheduled meeting on my Outlook calendar with the head of my team, Jason Greif. And I was like, “Oh sh*t, that’s not good. I have it go in, the meeting is in his office.” So I come to work and head to Jason’s office. Jason essentially rips me a new one and calls me out on all of my stuff and has this really, really hard conversation with me and tells me what I need to hear and not what I want to hear. He basically says, “Listen man, if you don’t turn it around, you’re wasting talent. You’re wasting your time and you’re wasting our time and you’re going to be a wasted talent. You have a lot of potential, but you’re wasting it.” The words he used were not exactly that kind,” laughs AJ. “But that was a turning point for me.”
“I left Jason’s office that day after our conversation, it was pretty brutal and I felt pretty bad. And so I left that day and I ended up, I’ll never forget this, on the back patio of my house I was actually renting at that time from my dad. It was another super pivotal moment for me that day – talking to my dad – asking him for advice as I’ve done throughout my life and still do so today.”
“My dad says to me, “Hey, listen, is this a good career? Do you like these people? Do you think they care about you? Could you see an opportunity here? Do you see growth? Do you see financial success? And I just said, “Yeah, I really do.” And he said, “All right, well I think you should go back in and I think you should give it 90 days. And I think you should work as hard as you possibly can and harder than you have before and give it everything you got for 90 days, see what it’s like and see what happens.” And that’s what I did. That was probably in June. So, June, July, August, September, October, I did that for five months. And I started writing more business than I ever had before. I ended up recruiting one of my best friends at the time, Josh Oldham and then they promoted me to a Field Training Agent on November 1st of that year as well. And basically, since that moment, I have probably been working six days a week, 70 plus hours for eight years now.”
From taking it easy to taking it seriously. And seriously enough to not only recruit his good friend Josh, but also recruiting other close friends like, Jared Winsey, Elliott Leniton and AJ’s cousin, Nick Barnett. “Getting to work with my friends and some family and getting to grow this business with them, see them grow and prosper professionally and also see how that affects their personal lives, their families and children, and seeing it all first-hand, it’s amazing for me and one of the greatest things I get to do,” says AJ.
Then there’s the leadership AJ says he has been privileged to learn from, which makes all the difference in the world. There’s nothing like being under the tutelage of others you admire and respect, because AJ says they too live the three C’s.
“The ability to partner and work with great leaders like: Seth Groff, Chad Douglas, Parita Patel, Brian Fuller and Max Willett; working with them from the time they were agents and became leaders and how much I’ve learned from them how they’ve taught me, pushed me and challenged me, and hopefully I’ve done the same for them, is truly rewarding. It’s an awesome experience for me seeing what they have done professionally and what they do for other people, it really motivates me,” says AJ.
AJ says his other great motivation comes from his wife Ashley. The two met some years ago when AJ walked into a bar and saw Ashley with a friend he knew from high school. He went up and talked to them and asked them if he could buy them a shot.
“Ashley said she was the designated driver, but I ordered three lemon drops anyway, one for me and both of them. And I told Ashley, “You’re not the designated driver anymore.” That was the beginning of a new relationship. “No one else has ever bought her a shot again,” laughs AJ.
AJ took his shot and he says it’s worked out tremendously. Ashley ended up going to law school and has since been named managing partner in her law firm, all while also being a new mom and about to double the fun with the couple’s next baby on the way.
“Ashley’s passion for what she does and for being a mother and being a spouse, I mean, she’s insane, in a great way,” says AJ. “It’s just her discipline level. She’s nine months pregnant and she was in court today and she was up at five o’clock in the morning to work out. And she’s the managing partner in her law firm. It’s just crazy.”
Crazy is AJ’s work ethic as well and he’s proud of it. He’s crazy about his three C’s: Consistency, Coachability and Character and he says he’s used all of them to drive one of his greatest accomplishments at USHA – growth. Being a number one builder in the company and experiencing significant growth – by showing others they are significant to him too – because everyone matters. It’s a journey AJ says he’s proud of and even more proud to have others join him.
“I feel that these paths have just opened up for me in my life,” says AJ. “Anything is truly possible. I never thought that I would be a Regional Sales Leader, or have the privilege to lead a team, or to be a father and a husband and be able to impact our community with this great company. I believe, anything, truly anything is possible. And I know that that’s kind of a cliche, but I truly feel that way. I never thought of going this far.”
“Years ago my dreams didn’t go this far and I don’t know why. They just didn’t. I’m going to continue learning from every single person around me and be adaptable and be coachable and be a good person. You’ll win if you do. I am. Good things will happen if you do this. You will weather whatever storm or whatever issue that you run into, whether it’s spiritual, emotional, physical, financial or in your relationship, or whatever it may be, if you always stay true to a higher place of moral character.”
“I’m never going to give up. I’m never going to back down. You can always learn from your mistakes and learn from the people around you. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and convey that feeling and seek out other people to help and then you can truly have anything you want. You can go far beyond what you’re dreaming. Anyone can go beyond where their life has taken them so far because I’m proof that it is possible. I think anything is possible if you just keep showing up.”
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky
